Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
My cousin was indeed waiting outside—both of them, in fact—and I told the one I assumed Constable Daniels wanted to speak to that his presence was requested inside the constabulary.
“And don’t try to be cute, Christopher. You’re literally the only thing standing between me and a cell.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Christopher said as he unwound himself from the passenger seat. “May I have my jacket back? Yours is there.”
He indicated the backseat, where my coat was neatly folded on the cushion. I shrugged out of his tweed and handed it to him.
“Not that ridiculous. Have him show you the note.”
“Which note?” He twitched his sleeves down.
“The one accusing me of murder.” I snapped my own jacket open preparatory to putting it on. He moved to help me and I shooed him away. “Go, Christopher. If you waste any more time, he’ll think we’re conspiring.”
Christopher muttered something—it sounded like, “I’ll show him conspiring,”—but he went. I finished wrapping my jacket around myself before I crawled into the backseat and met Francis’s eyes in the mirror.
“There’s a note?”
“Capital letters in black ink. Shoved through the mail slot in the door after the murder.”
“That’s interesting,” my cousin commented after I had repeated the accusation.
“Isn’t it? Someone either saw me—saw us—coming or going, although if they did, they would have seen Christopher too, because we didn’t separate at all. Or someone knew I was going to be there—with or without Christopher—and decided to frame me.”
“The only people who knew that you were going to be there are the people at Sutherland Hall,” Francis said.
I nodded. “Precisely so.”
He eyed me in the mirror. “I spent the morning with Constance.”
I huffed. “I know it wasn’t you, Francis. Or Constance, for that matter. Not only had neither of you any reason to kill Doctor Meadows, but you certainly wouldn’t frame me for it if you had done.”
“I’m simply mentioning the fact that I have an alibi, Pipsqueak.”
“And the police may care about that,” I said, “but I don’t. Although I suppose it’s a good thing you do, really. Someone did it, and when they can’t prove that it was me, they’ll have to look for someone else.”
There was a moment’s pause while I scowled and while Francis thought, and while the door to the constabulary stayed stubbornly closed. It was too soon to expect Christopher back out—of course it was—but I was still watching the door, waiting.
“He was alive when you saw him?” Francis asked.
I glanced up and caught his eyes on me in the mirror. “Doctor Meadows, do you mean? Yes, he was. We spoke. It was definitely him, alive and well. Whoever killed him, killed him after Christopher and I had gone.”
“Did he have any information about Morrison?”
I shook my head. “He remembered her, but he said he hadn’t had any interaction with her since she left Aunt Charlotte’s employ. And that’s another thing.”
“What’s another thing?”
“If the same person killed Doctor Meadows as killed Morrison, and perhaps Hughes, too—”
“A traveling serial murderer?” Francis said with interest. “Do go on, Pippa.”
I flicked him a look. “It sounds farfetched, I know. But bear with me. If the same person killed all of them, and for the same reason, why would that person not kill Doctor Meadows before we had the chance to speak with him? Why wait?”
“It sounds as if he had nothing of interest to say,” Francis pointed out, “so why not let you speak to him?”
“Yes, of course.” I nodded. “But if he didn’t know anything of interest, why kill him at all?”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. And opened it again. “Perhaps, as they say in the novels, he knew something he didn’t know that he knew?”
“Then why take the chance that he’d figure it out? Or tell me? Or us?”
“Because you wouldn’t know it for being significant even if he did tell you?”
“But if no one but the murderer would recognize its significance, and yet it was significant enough to commit murder over… why wait twenty-three years? Why not murder him back then, when no one was curious?”
Francis shrugged somewhat helplessly. “I don’t know, Pippa.
Perhaps it had nothing at all to do with Morrison.
Perhaps Doctor Meadows was having an affair with the butcher’s wife, and the butcher saw you and Kit come out of the infirmary, and thought he’d take the opportunity to get rid of his wife’s lover while framing you. ”
I tilted my head contemplatively. “All right. I’ll take your word for it that the butcher’s wife would be worth all this excitement. But if so, why not frame Christopher?”
“Kit’s the Duke of Sutherland’s nephew,” Francis said, “and Crispin’s best friend. Best not to frame him.”
Yes, that was true. While I was merely the girl Crispin was hung up on, but not the one he was marrying. The poor relation, the half-German orphan, only there on sufferance. It would be safe to frame me.
“Is the butcher’s wife worth committing murder for?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Francis shook his head.
“I have no idea, Pippa. I don’t imagine so.
But it could be the baker’s wife, or the greengrocer’s wife, or anyone else’s wife, for that matter.
Or perhaps Doctor Meadows did something at some point—medically, don’t you know—that upset someone.
Someone’s child caught the measles and died, and the parents still aren’t over it. ”
“But that happens,” I said. “Not usually, I know; I had the measles, and I was fine—”
Francis nodded. “We all had the measles and were fine. But sometimes someone isn’t fine. And if someone’s child died from the measles—or scarlet fever, or an allergy to bees—and the parents blamed Doctor Meadows…”
Yes, of course. And it might not have been a child at all, it might have been a woman in childbirth or a man with an injury of some sort. When a person is unhinged enough to commit murder, what made them decide to in the first place might not make sense to the rest of us.
Francis nodded when I said as much. “I’m sure Constable Daniels will look into Doctor Meadows’s patients.”
“You don’t think he’ll simply arrest me for murder?”
Especially if Uncle Harold pushed for it? Which he might do, if he thought it was important enough to get me out of the way before Crispin’s wedding to Laetitia. He did have the Chief Constable’s ear.
“If he tries, I’ll remind him that there are other avenues of investigation,” Francis said. “Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see Scotland Yard soon. Kit rang up Tommy before we motored down here.”
“Rang up— Tom Gardiner, do you mean? Is he coming?”
“When does he not,” Francis wanted to know, “when Kit phones?”
Fair point. “Scotland Yard isn’t taking over the case, though. Are they?”
“I have no idea,” Francis said cheerfully.
“I can’t imagine that they would do. It isn’t particularly exciting, is it?
Village doctor brained with doorstop? The only thing that makes it interesting, is that it might be connected to Morrison’s murder, and perhaps Hughes’s murder.
But those are in two different jurisdictions, and Hughes’s murder was months ago… ”
I nodded. “For all I know, they’ve already arrested someone for that. I don’t know that they haven’t. It might simply have been a robbery, the way that they thought.”
“And Morrison might have gotten on the wrong side of a Primitive Methodist,” Francis agreed, “while the butcher or baker did for Doctor Meadows.”
“Precisely. Although I imagine that Tom might know about Hughes, at least. She had his card in her handbag—that’s why the Bristol detectives rang him up in the first place—and he probably asked to be kept à jour. If they arrested someone, they might have let him know.”
“We can ask him when he gets here,” Francis said, “which he’ll likely do in the next few hours.”
“That reminds me. Constable Daniels said that I can’t leave. I have to stay for the inquest. Christopher too, I assume.”
“We thought as much,” Francis nodded. “Our second inquest in a week. Exciting times.”
After a moment, he added, “Crispin will be delighted.”
“His father won’t be.” Nor would Laetitia. Or her mother.
“That’s all right,” Francis said. “He won’t kick you out. He can’t really kick us out, and that means you’re staying, too.”
I supposed it did. “What a muddle this is.”
“You ought to be used to it by now,” Francis said. “It’s hardly your first murder case, is it?”
No, of course it wasn’t. But the question was clearly rhetorical, so I didn’t answer it, just let him go on.
“It’ll be all right, Pipsqueak. Nothing we haven’t dealt with before. And nothing to do with us, except peripherally.”
He turned the key in the ignition of the Crossley. “Here’s Kit now. Let’s get you back to the Hall and tell Uncle Harold the good news.”
“Sounds lovely,” I said.
Meanwhile, Christopher had approached the vehicle. “Not so fast, Francis. Constable Daniels wants a word with you, too.”
“With me? Why?” But he disengaged the motor and dropped the key in his pocket.
“No idea,” Christopher said as he opened the passenger door. “He asked whether I was alone. When I said no, that you were here too, he asked me to send you in.”
“But I wasn’t even in the village this morning.” Nonetheless, he stepped out of the motorcar and adjusted his coat.
“I assume he just wants confirmation of something or other,” Christopher said, fitting himself into the front seat. “Off you go, there’s a good chap. Don’t say anything you’ll regret.”
Francis eyed him. “Not sure what that would be.”
“Anything we would regret, then.” Christopher’s quick side-eye included me in the ‘we’. “Anything to suggest that either of us was complicit in Doctor Meadows’s murder. Or Morrison’s ditto.”
“I wouldn’t,” Francis said. “Besides, you weren’t.”
“Just make sure the constable knows that, if you please.”
Francis nodded. “I’ll be back shortly.”
He made his way to the front door, and Christopher twisted in his seat to address me. “Are you all right, Pippa?”