Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
I gave my room a quick once-over as I gathered my supplies.
Nothing seemed out of place or out of order, but with just a few seconds to look around, it was difficult to be certain.
I promised myself I would do a more thorough search before I went to bed, before grabbing up my things and heading back into the hallway.
To my surprise, Laetitia was waiting, as well. “I might as well come along,” she said airily, as if someone had invited her. “We all need to use the lavatory, and this way no one is alone.”
“The more, the merrier,” I agreed. I didn’t particularly want her here, of course, but it did make sense for us all to go as a group, and this way I wouldn’t have to worry about Geoffrey getting over his strange restraint and sidling up to me while I was waiting for Constance.
The latter ducked inside the loo with her sponge bag while Laetitia and I stationed ourselves outside. On either side of the door, with at least three feet separating us.
“You don’t really believe that we’re in danger, do you?” were the first words out of her mouth.
“I can’t imagine that you are,” I answered. “You don’t know anything about what’s going on, do you?”
She shook her head. “Do you?”
“I know who had motive and opportunity,” I said.
She straightened. “Who?”
“I’m not telling you. Then you’d be in danger, too.”
That wasn’t the reason, of course. But as expected, it stopped her from asking any further questions. Instead, she sank her teeth into her lower lip and stared at me.
“Just out of curiosity,” I asked, “did you happen to hear a motorcar leaving Sutherland Hall the night Morrison died?”
“I was in my room,” Laetitia said. “In the west wing.” After a moment she added, sounding annoyed, “Crispin was tired.”
The implication being that had he not been, they would have spent the night together.
“So he mentioned,” I said, and I don’t think I sounded particularly one way or the other about it, although she gave me a narrow look. I added, “I don’t suppose you’d have any idea why anyone would want to make sure that he slept through the night that night, would you?”
There was a beat. “Did someone do that?”
“It seems as if someone might have done,” I said. “He slept unusually soundly, he said. Almost as if someone wanted to make certain of it.”
There was another moment of silence before Laetitia said, “Perhaps you should inquire of your cousin.”
My back stiffened. “What is that supposed to mean? Which cousin?”
“Crispin and your cousin Kit went up together,” Laetitia inquired, “didn’t they?”
It was less a question than a slightly malicious reminder, and I’m happy to say that I kept my temper when I told her, “So they did. But Christopher had no reason to dope Crispin. And if you intended it as a dig at Francis, he doesn’t take Veronal anymore.”
Laetitia looked politely skeptical, and I scowled. “Neither of them would have had any reason to put Crispin to sleep, because neither of them had a motive for killing Morrison. Why would either of them—either of us—want her dead? We’ve never even seen her!”
Unlike Laetitia, who had grown up a quarter mile down the lane from Morrison. Not that that was likely to have had anything to do with the maid’s murder, but it was still a fact.
“Why would anyone?” Laetitia asked. It sounded rhetorical, but the expression in her eyes said otherwise.
I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could get the first word out, the lavatory door opened, and Constance stepped out, smelling of cold cream and mint. “Next,” she said brightly.
I shut my mouth again, chagrined. Laetitia eyed me for a moment, perhaps hoping that I would go on, but when I didn’t, she ducked inside the lavatory before I could even inquire as to whether she wanted to go first. Constance arched her brows. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing more than the usual,” I said. “I almost told her who I suspect of killing Morrison, and why.”
If Constance hadn’t opened the door, I would have blurted out the whole thing, and without knowing whether Laetitia knew about it or not.
“Well, don’t tell me,” Constance said, as the water turned on inside the lavatory. “I don’t want to know.”
“Safer for you that way, no doubt.”
Not that I thought Constance was in any danger whatsoever. I doubted that what was going on had anything to do with her.
She shook her head when I said so. “I don’t see how. Although if you’re looking for people with motive, I’m on the list, you know.”
I blinked. “What on earth are you talking about, Constance?”
“Well, you never even met Morrison, did you, Pippa? Nor did Francis or Christopher. Of course neither of you would kill her. But I knew her. And I didn’t like her very much. She was always nice to Mother and to Johanna, but she wasn’t nice to me.”
“Well…” I cast about for something to say. “I suppose, if you want to look at it that way.”
It seemed a poor motive for murder, though. Especially when Lady Peckham and her ward were both dead now, and neither of them by Constance’s hand.
For a second—just a second, I swear—I wondered whether it was possible that Gilbert Peckham had taken the blame for his sister, and it was in fact Constance who had murdered their mother as well as Johanna, and now she had murdered Morrison, too.
Then reason reared its head, and I shook off the delusion. “Don’t be silly, Constance. Nobody would take that seriously as a motive for murder.”
“Anything can be a motive for murder,” Constance said serenely. “It depends on the person doing the murdering.”
Yes, of course it did. “But you’d have to be mad to kill your mother’s maid over something like that. Especially when she was already miles and miles away and you didn’t have to deal with her ever again.”
Constance shrugged. “I’m merely mentioning it. You just never know.”
You didn’t. Although I was fairly certain that I didn’t have to lose sleep over this particular possibility.
“Tom’s right, anyway. It’s none of our concern.
The Bristol police are dealing with Hughes, and the Stow-on-the-Wold constabulary is dealing with Morrison, and Constable Daniels is dealing with Doctor Meadows and Alfie.
None of them need our help to figure this out. ”
“No,” Constance agreed. “You should stay out of it, Pippa. You’ll be much safer that way.”
Yes, indeed. And while that statement might have sounded like a threat to anyone who didn’t know Constance, I didn’t think she had threats in her, let alone murder. “I’ll do that. Do you want to go to your room while I wait for Laetitia, or would you prefer to stay here with me?”
“I’ll wait with you,” Constance said placidly, and leaned against the wall next to me with every appearance of someone settling in for the duration.
Laetitia emerged from the lavatory a minute or two later, trailing the scent of roses and her diaphanous negligee.
As I ducked into the loo myself, I reflected that she really is unfairly attractive, even without a single speck of makeup on her face.
I’m certainly not ugly—I was looking at myself in the mirror, so I could see the truth for myself—but the best thing that can be said about me is that I’m cute.
Meanwhile, Laetitia is the sort of gorgeous that can launch ships and start wars, and that makes grown men trip over their own feet in the streets and lose track of their conversations.
For a moment, while I scooped cold cream out of the jar and slapped it on my face, I wondered whether Christopher might be right and Crispin really could have killed multiple people to preserve his future with her.
I didn’t think that Christopher was wrong about Crispin’s feelings for me.
Not now that I had had some time to come to terms with the idea of them.
But there was also the fact that he had never acted on those feelings, and had proposed to Laetitia instead of me.
I liked to pity him for being trapped in an engagement with a woman he didn’t love, but the truth was that he had never once displayed any regrets for having made that decision.
So yes, he might imagine that he loved me. It might even be true. But when it came right down to it, he had chosen Laetitia over me. And having once made that choice, how far would he go to keep her?
She was gone by the time I came back out of the lavatory, and I don’t know why that should have come as a surprise. “Where’s Laetitia? Surely she didn’t leave you here alone?”
“I sent her back to her room,” Constance said. “She was being herself—”
I translated ‘herself’ as ‘annoying and condescending.’
“—and she wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place, so I got rid of her. We didn’t need her. You and I do very well on our own.”
Constance tucked her hand through my arm as we headed down the hallway towards our respective doors.
“Of course we do.” I peeled my ears as we passed Laetitia’s door, but I couldn’t hear anything from within. “Are you worried, Constance? We can share tonight if you’d rather.”
We’d done it before, both at Godolphin as children, and more recently, at the Dower House in May.
But Constance shook her head. “I’m not worried. Even if there is a murderer on the loose, he has no reason to want to murder me. I don’t know anything. Although… would you feel better if we shared, Pippa?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine. Not at all worried.”
That was a lie, of course. But if anyone came to kill me, I’d rather not put Constance in the line of fire. Whoever was doing this wasn’t concerned about collateral damage, or Alfie would still be with us, and there was no reason to risk Constance by putting her in bed next to me.
And at any rate, I was more concerned about who the murderer was, and what would happen to him, than I was about being murdered.
She squeezed my arm. “Are you certain?”
“Positive,” I said steadily, and stopped outside her door. “Here we are. Do you want me to come in while you check the room?”