Page 2 of Death at the Dower House
When Christopher and I had scurried away from Sutherland Hall last Tuesday, like rats leaving a sinking ship, Crispin had just been taken off by a chief inspector in Scotland Yard for an interview. Aunt Charlotte had been found dead in bed that morning, with what amounted to a suicide note—or at least a letter addressed to her only son—left on the writing table. That was after an attempted murder of me—or possibly Christopher—the previous day, the discovery of the dead valet the morning before that, and the death of the old duke the afternoon prior to that again. It had been quite an eventful weekend, and while none of the deaths had really affected me personally—the old duke hadn’t been my grandfather, and Christopher’s aunt hadn’t liked me much at all, a feeling which was decidedly mutual—they were obviously much closer to Crispin’s heart (assuming he had one). The duke had been his grandfather, he’d lived in the same house as the valet, and Christopher’s aunt was his mother, who had adored him. I imagined the last week couldn’t have been easy.
And if I looked closely, I could see it. There were dark circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t been resting well, and his skin wasn’t just pale, it was pasty. The eyes themselves were bloodshot, and if I had to guess, I would have said he’d lost half a stone in the week since I’d last seen him. All in all, he made a perfect picture of a young man who didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, and didn’t exercise, but spent much too much time in a bottle.
“You look awful, St George,” I told him when we had finally arrived at our destination, Sutherland Hall outside the village of Little Sutherland in southern Wiltshire, and he was standing in the courtyard holding the car door open for me.
He sneered. “Thanks ever so, Darling.”
“I mean it. Haven’t you bothered to eat since we left last week?”
He shrugged, and moved past me to close the car door, before lifting the weekender bags out of the back seat and handing them over to Alfred, the second footman, who had appeared out of thin air to receive them.
“Same rooms as last time,” Crispin instructed him.
I made a face, since I knew that that would put me in the west wing, as far away from Christopher’s room in the east wing as it was possible for me to get.
Alfred headed into the foyer with the bags and Crispin arched a brow. “Problem, Darling? Did you want to be closer to the action?”
“I thought it was your mother who was obsessed with keeping me away from the men’s wing,” I told him, without really thinking about what I was saying.
And then, of course, I realized what I had said when he grimaced. “Oh, no. I’m sorry, St George. I didn’t mean…”
“I’m sure,” Crispin said dryly. “No reason why you would take any special care with my feelings.”
He paused expectantly, probably for me to express doubts as to his possessing any. Under the circumstances I refrained, since I could tell quite well that he was still reeling from his mother’s death.
So instead I steeled myself before I put a hand on the arm of his tweed coat and said, as sincerely as I could, “I’m sorry, St George. Truly. I forgot for a moment.”
He looked down at my hand, appalled or perhaps just astonished that I was actually touching him, before he nodded. “I do that, too. Go along as normal, until suddenly I remember that my mother is dead. And then the world ends all over again.”
His eyes met mine for a moment, storm-cloud gray, before he twitched his arm out from under my hand and took a step back. “At any rate, it made sense to put Christopher and Francis into the rooms they had last time. The only other empty room in the east wing is my mother’s, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to sleep there.”
No, I definitely wouldn’t. If I had a choice between the room where Aunt Charlotte had died, and the west wing, I’d take the west wing every time.
“You won’t be alone in the west wing this time,” Crispin added. “Aunt Roslyn and Uncle Herbert will be here by supper. And my mother’s old friend Lady Peckham is staying for a few nights. She’s bringing her daughter and her ward, along with her son. They’ll be in the west wing, too.”
“Constance Peckham?” I asked. “Her mother and brother?”
He nodded. “How do you know Constance?”
There was a faint sneer to his expression, as if he didn’t think much of Constance Peckham. I wanted to chastise him for it, but the truth was that I had never thought much of Constance Peckham myself.
That may have made it sound as if I had something against Constance, which wouldn’t be true at all. It wasn’t that I thought she was stuck up or unpleasant or anything like that. She was merely very quiet and unassuming, and as such, very easy to dismiss. It galled me that I couldn’t take Crispin to task for his cavalier attitude towards someone who was, by all accounts, a very sweet-natured young lady, and certainly a much better person than he was. But it was hard to do so when I had mostly dismissed her as mealy-mouthed myself, for as long as I had known her.
I decided on the spot to be especially nice to Constance when she turned up.
“We went to Godolphin together,” I told him, “while you and Christopher were away at Eton.”
This might have been the longest, most civil conversation I’d had with St George in eons. It made me feel strange, and I looked around for Christopher, for something else to focus on. He was standing on the other side of the Hispano-Suiza looking from one to the other of us with a strange expression on his face. Couldn’t believe the lack of hostilities either, probably. Or perhaps he was preparing to interfere when the lack of hostilities invariably came to an end. “Did you hear, Christopher? Constance Peckham is expected.”
Christopher nodded warily. “Do I know Constance?”
“I doubt it,” I told him. “She and I weren’t close. She was a very meek sort of girl. Kind and well-meaning and all that, just very unassuming. Not St George’s type at all.”
Crispin sneered. “And what would you know about my type, Darling?”
Whatever truce we’d temporarily enjoyed was obviously over, and we were back to snide remarks and verbal slaps.
I can give as good as I get when it comes to that, so I waded into the fray.
