Chapter 14 #3
I was wearing considerably less than he was, for certain.
Men get undershirts, then regular shirts, then waistcoats, and jackets.
All I had was my chemise and my rayon frock.
And while I could have asked him to take his jacket off and give it to me, I could also have picked up a macintosh from the boot room.
That was if I had thought about it, of course.
I hadn’t done, so now I was shivering, and stalking stiff-legged towards the stable.
“I’m fine, Christopher. It’s only a few more yards.”
We reached the carriage house first, and ducked inside.
It wasn’t warm, of course, although it was a bit warmer than outside. The wind was less chilling for one thing, and there was no stinging moisture in the air.
“All the motorcars are here,” Christopher commented, looking from Crispin’s blue Hispano-Suiza to Constance’s burgundy Crossley, to her aunt and uncle’s green Daimler and Uncle Harold’s newly acquired Rolls Royce Phantom.
The only thing missing was Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert’s Bentley, and that would be back at Beckwith Place by now.
Christopher raised his voice. “Alfred?”
Alfie was the second footman, who had also, since Wilkins’s demise, obliged as chauffeur for Uncle Harold when the latter desired to go somewhere. His Grace apparently didn’t think it appropriate for a peer of the realm to be behind the wheel of his own motorcar.
“He must be up at the house,” I said when no response came. “There’s no need for him to be here, is there? I’m sure Uncle Harold isn’t planning to go anywhere before supper. And Alfie has duties inside, as well.”
“He wasn’t at tea in the servants’ hall,” Christopher said as he followed me out.
“Nor was Tidwell.” I closed the door behind him. “The two of them were probably cleaning up after the family before sitting down for their own meal.”
Christopher gave a shrug. “Let’s take a look at the horses, then.”
We headed for the stables, where the air was much warmer, and full of snorting and movement. Manes tossed and tails flicked as horses nickered.
“All present,” I said.
Christopher nodded. “But if anyone had ridden to the village this morning, the horse would be back now.”
I looked around. “Where are the grooms?”
“Having their tea, too, I wager.” Christopher looked around as well. “Or a sit-down when they’re not needed. Back there.”
He pointed to a door in the back of the stable, through which we did indeed find the two grooms sharing… not tea, but a pint and a game of cards across a rickety table.
When Christopher pushed the door open, they both jumped to their feet, one of them so quickly that his chair turned over. Guilt was marked clearly across both of their faces. One of them gulped. “My—”
Christopher waved a hand. “Not Crispin. Christopher Astley.”
Neither of them said anything, but they did look a bit more relaxed once they knew that it wasn’t Uncle Harold or his son who had caught them soldiering in the middle of the workday.
Knowing Crispin, I would have thought that he’d be more likely to join them than tell his father what he’d seen, although I suppose I might be wrong.
Uncle Harold might have beaten those sorts of egalitarian inclinations out of him.
“We wanted to know whether anyone had taken any of the horses out today,” Christopher said. “Sometime this morning, perhaps.”
The two grooms exchanged a glance. “We did,” one of them said. I didn’t know his name, I was chagrined to realize. I ride, but only when I can’t get out of it, and they were both new since the last time I had visited the Sutherland Hall stable. Perhaps I wasn’t as egalitarian as I’d like to think.
The other groom added, “The weather’s not good enough for any of the guests to want to ride today.”
There was a trace of something in his voice that might have been humor, but that might equally well have been the condescension of a man—or boy, he wasn’t much more—to the upper class who was too delicate to do what was necessary.
Christopher, to his credit, ignored it.
“When was this?” I wanted to know. “That you rode out?”
They both turned to me. A second passed before the first chap told me that it had been this morning after breakfast.
“Did you happen to see anyone on your ride? Where did you go?”
They had gone across the fields, it seemed, and they both agreed that they hadn’t seen a soul.
“Not even Christopher and myself walking down to the village?”
They exchanged a glance, but were adamant that no, they hadn’t seen anyone. “Sorry, Miss Darling,” one of them said.
“That’s all right.” I smiled pleasantly. “Carry on. We’ll see ourselves out.”
I stepped back and Christopher shut the door. We didn’t speak until we had left the stable and were outside in the wet again.
“They could have done it,” I said. “They were out here by themselves. No one kept tabs on them. They could have ridden to the village, killed Doctor Meadows, and tried to frame me.”
Christopher nodded, although he seemed to disagree, or at least he delighted in playing devil’s advocate. “Why would they do, though, Pippa? You don’t even know their names. I’m surprised that they know yours.”
I was too, frankly. “Be that as it may, they do know it. One of them could have written the note.”
“Would they have access to the note paper?”
Perhaps not, now that he mentioned it. The grooms didn’t tend to come into the house much. They certainly wouldn’t be welcome in the library or drawing room. And it wasn’t likely that they’d have their own supply of writing paper and ink in the back of the stable, was it?
“Let’s go,” Christopher said, and took my elbow.
“Where?”
“I want to see whether there’s writing paper in Wilkins’s rooms above the garage. And I want to talk to Alfie.”
“Do you think he might have gone to the village this morning? Or might have seen who did?”
Alfred was a local, so he might have had his own reasons for doing away with Doctor Meadows.
He certainly knew my name, and unlike the grooms, he would have had easy access to the Hall and to the writing paper.
He probably also knew that of everyone here, I was the person he could most safely accuse without repercussions.
Christopher didn’t answer, just pushed open the door to the garage and started past the motorcars, over to the staircase by the back wall.
I followed more slowly, peering into and around the vehicles as I passed them.
One of them might have made a trip to the village this morning, but how would one know which?
The nearest vehicle was Crispin’s Hispano-Suiza, and I put my hand against the metal covering the motor.
The surface was cold against my palm, and I dropped my hand again.
The motor would have been hot directly after the trip, I assumed, but that was hours ago.
The fact that it was cold now proved nothing one way or the other.
Christopher headed up the stairs. By the time he reached the door at the top, I had just got to the bottom, and I stopped there and waited instead of dragging the too-big Wellies from step to step.
“Try the latch,” I suggested after a few seconds, when there had been no answer.
He squinted down at me. “I don’t want to walk into the man’s private quarters without warning, Pippa. He’s a servant, but he still has the right to privacy in his own quarters.”
“You knocked,” I said, beginning to climb. “Isn’t that warning enough?
Besides, he probably wasn’t even here. He was most likely up at the house, doing footmanly things under Tidwell’s beady eye.
“He might be asleep,” Christopher said, although he reached for the handle anyway.
I snorted as I stopped two steps below him. “In the middle of the workday? Not bloody likely, is it?”
He didn’t answer, and I added, persuasively, “Just open the door, Christopher. I’m sure the place is empty, and all we want to do is look at the desk blotter.”
“Fine.” But he took a breath before he twisted the knob and pushed the door in. And hovered on the threshold, swaying. “Oh, God.”