Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
I have never been privileged to visit Crispin’s chambers.
Whenever I came to Sutherland Hall as a child, we played outside—he had an early habit of abandoning me in the hedge maze—or we crawled around the attics, or we behaved properly in one of the rooms downstairs.
The game room or library, as likely as not.
(When I say ‘we,’ I mean myself, along with Crispin and Christopher.
Francis and Robbie were both too old to spend time with us.) Then Crispin and Christopher went off to Eton (and I to the Godolphin School for Girls, where I met Constance) while Robbie and Francis went to the Front.
All of which is to say that there has never been any reason, nor any opportunity, for me to go beyond this particular door.
I knew that it would lead to a sitting room.
Crispin also has a bedchamber as well as a dressing room in his suite, but I took care not to walk straight into either of those.
I would have to invade the bedchamber sooner or later, at least if I wanted a look at Laetitia’s love notes—or to see whether my own correspondence was hidden anywhere—but for now, I stepped into the sitting room and closed the door quietly behind me.
The suite seemed unoccupied. The sitting room was empty, and the door connecting it to the bedchamber stood open. I could see the corner of an opulent four-poster through the opening, neatly made. There were no sounds emanating from the other rooms.
“Crispin?” I ventured, so softly that only someone on this side of the door to the hallway would have heard me. “St George?”
There was no answer, and so I breathed a little easier as I proceeded to look around.
The sitting room looked just like every other room at Sutherland Hall: old, luxurious, and staid.
A comfortable Chesterfield sat in front of the fireplace, with a well-stocked bar cart against the wall.
The Viscount St George could stay up here and get blotto in the comfort and privacy of his own chambers, it seemed—and he probably did do, when it was just him and Uncle Harold in residence.
A roll-top desk sat against the opposite wall, and I made my way to it.
It had been left open, and I could see a stack of notepaper inside, along with envelopes, stamps, and the like. It looked very much like the paper Constable Daniels had shown me earlier.
That meant nothing, of course. Everyone in the house had access to the same sort of paper, and there was no reason to think that Crispin, in particular, had been behind the note.
The blotter was stained with ink, and I peered at it for signs that it had been used to blot the anonymous note. There were none—signs, I mean; and again, there was no reason to think it would have been—and I moved on.
You may ask why I was tiptoeing through Crispin’s rooms when I didn’t suspect him of trying to frame me.
Six months ago, he would have been at the top of my suspect list. Back then, I not only thought him capable of murder, but also believed he would have happily framed me for any number of crimes he himself had committed.
That was before I got to know him better, and also before Christopher had, somewhat reluctantly, convinced me that I was the apple of Crispin’s eye, and that he would never, under any circumstances, do anything to harm me.
But that’s neither here nor there. Tidwell and Mrs. Mason had mentioned love notes, and I wanted a look at them. While Crispin would never accuse me of a murder I hadn’t committed, I wouldn’t put the same past Laetitia.
I couldn’t explain why she would have bothered to murder Doctor Meadows—surely not simply to frame yours truly for his death—but it couldn’t hurt to take a look at what she had written, and how her handwriting compared to that in the note.
I left the desk and made my way towards the door to the bedroom.
It, too, looked very much like every other room in Sutherland Hall.
A big, old bed with a goose feather mattress and a fancy counterpane, opposite a gently popping fireplace.
There was no one up here—or weren’t supposed to be—so there was no need to keep the fire going during the day, but the maids had kept it banked and ready to be manipulated into full flame again as soon as dinner started.
It was almost winter, and too cold to do without the extra heat.
The bed was big enough for two, and I contemplated it for a moment with my head tilted. Did Crispin sleep on one side or the other—and if so, which?—or was he the type to sprawl in the middle, taking up most of the space?
The latter, I decided, the spoiled, little, rich boy. He wasn’t used to sharing, and would probably spread out over as much of the bed as possible, leaving his fiancée—did she ever share it—to perch on one of the sides.
I had a reason for wondering, I assure you.
I was trying to determine which bedside table the letters were most likely to be in.
But if Crispin didn’t have a side, then it didn’t matter.
I headed for the closest night table, ran my eye over the water glass, carafe, ashtray, etcetera, that littered its surface, and pulled the drawer below open.
Here was more of the same writing paper, along with the usual items one finds in someone’s bedside table.
A torch, in the event of a power cut. Matches, in event of the same, or perhaps simply to light a cigarette if a lighter wasn’t available.
A handkerchief. An envelope, slightly different from the others, a bit smudged.
From me, perhaps?
I reached in and fished it out with two fingers and turned it over. There was no name on the front of it, but it was open. From the looks of it, it had never been gummed down. An empty envelope Crispin had used to store something important in, then, perhaps.
I reached in, and found a single sheet of writing paper, folded, and a piece of slightly crumbled newsprint: carefully cut out but a bit the worse from wear after being jostled in the drawer for some amount of time.
One side showed a headline about the general strike, dating the newspaper to May of this year, some six months ago.
There was no reason I could think of why Crispin would be interested in that.
It hadn’t affected him in the least. The strike had been going on while we’d been at the Dower House for Constance’s and Gilbert’s weekend party, but Crispin had motored there from Sutherland Hall, unlike Christopher and I, who had had to take the train from Waterloo Station to Salisbury first.
I turned the clipping over and saw, immediately, why it had been excised from the paper: it was Aunt Charlotte’s obituary from the week of her funeral. Dearly beloved, the obituary said, wife and mother, died suddenly but peacefully in her bed.
Which, yes, was the truth. I had seen her that morning, and she had looked like she were asleep.
She had also looked as if she were already laid out for the funeral, with her nightgown buttoned to her throat and her hands folded across her chest. Whatever else it did, an overdose of Veronal made the recipient slip off into eternal sleep with no outward signs of either foul play or discomfort in the proceedings.
Not that there was any question about foul play in this case, of course. Aunt Charlotte had left a note, in which she had confessed to killing both Duke Henry and Grimsby. The newspaper clipping didn’t mention that, either.
I slipped it carefully back into the envelope and pulled the notepaper out instead.
My darling boy, it began, in loopy, girlish cursive. If I am still alive when you find this, do not try to revive me.
I winced. I had read those words before. This was the note that Aunt Charlotte had left on her escritoire before she downed a triple measure of Francis’s Veronal and lay down to die. The police must have given it back after the investigation, and Crispin had held on to it.
I was breaking all sorts of rules of law and decency by being here, and it was even worse that I was reading something so personal.
I folded the note up without finishing it, cheeks hot, and stuffed it back into the envelope.
I dropped the latter back into the drawer and then I nudged a few other things on top of it so it wouldn’t be so obvious that someone had been here and pulled it out.
That done, I pushed the drawer shut and made my way around the bed to the other night table.
I might feel guilty, but not enough to stop me from further snooping while I had the chance.
The other side of the bed looked similar to the one I had already been on.
There were no water glass and no carafe, so whether Crispin sprawled in the middle or not, he presumably entered the bed from the side closest to the door.
On this side lay a book—Dorothy L. Sayers’s recent release, Clouds of Witness—with a bookmark.
He had made it a couple of chapters in, I noticed.
I had finished the book a month or so ago—although in justice to him, he had been somewhat busy this autumn, with a new fiancée and all.
He may have had other things on his mind when he went to bed.
In any case, his laziness was my gain. I knew the ending, and knowing that he was reading the book meant that I could spoil it for him the next time the opportunity came up.
Which I would ensure that it did sooner rather than later, of course.
I don’t let the opportunity go by to ruin Crispin’s fun.
First I would have to come up with a way to introduce the subject without letting him know that I had been in his room and seen the book, but that probably wouldn’t turn out to be a problem.
He’s laughably easy to wind up for someone who knows him well.
It was in such a pleasant state of anticipation that I pulled open the night table drawer and came face to face with the stack of love letters from Laetitia.