Page 32 of Death at the Dower House
“Can you ask the other servants whether any of them have seen her this morning?”
He glanced at Gilbert, who looked blank, and then at Constance, who nodded. “Please, Dawson.”
“Right away, Miss Constance.” He removed himself.
Laetitia huffed, and finally took her hand off Crispin’s shoulder. “This seems like a big to-do about nothing.”
Of course it did, to her. She wasn’t the one who had found two different people dead in their beds two weekends ago.
“If she’s down in the servants’ quarters sleeping off a night of excess, we’ll all be very happy,” I told her, “but in the meantime, I’m going to look for her.”
I pushed my chair back.
“I’ll come with you,” Christopher said, and did the same.
“I’ll stay with Constance,” Francis said. “We’ll look around the ground floor.”
“Dawson will speak to the servants,” Constance added, “and, I’m sure, look around below stairs. If you two will do the first floor, that should be the whole house. If she isn’t inside, I suppose we’ll have to check the garage and garden next.”
“Did anyone see her come in from the garden last night?”
No one admitted to having done so. And no one asked me how I’d known that Johanna had been outside after I myself had gone up to bed, either. But I noticed Crispin’s eyes on me, so at least he was wondering, even if he didn’t actually say anything about it.
When he made to push his chair back from the table, I shook my head. “Stay here.”
If what I feared had taken place, and something had happened to Johanna, Crispin was the very last person who should be looking for her.
I took Christopher’s arm instead. “We’ll be back down in a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
We headed out of the dining room and toward the stairs.
Nine
We foundher in Lady Peckham’s bed.
I won’t bore you with a detailed recounting of the time or ratiocination that led up to the discovery. Johanna obviously wasn’t in Constance’s room, since she or I or both of us had been in there until Constance came down for breakfast. And she equally obviously wasn’t in the room Christopher had shared with Crispin and Francis, since they’d all been there together.
“Just so there is no question,” I said as we made our way up to the first floor landing, “when St George said he was with you and Francis all night…?”
Christopher slanted me a look. “He was with me and Francis. Not immediately. He came in perhaps twenty minutes after we did. Perhaps a bit longer. But I was still awake when he did. We spoke. And he didn’t leave the room again after that. I would have woken up if he had. And he was still in the room with us this morning.”
I nodded. I hadn’t expected anything different, but it was good to have it confirmed. “That leaves Gilbert Peckham’s room, that he shared with Marsden, and Johanna’s room, that I guess only Laetitia slept in.”
“And Lady Peckham’s room,” Christopher said. “Which is really the most likely place if she’s up here. There was at least one person, sometimes two or even three, in all the other rooms last night. I’m sure we’ve all visited the loo at some point this morning, so we know she isn’t there. It’s either one of the closets, or Lady Peckham’s bed chamber. Or she isn’t upstairs at all.”
Yes. If she was on one of the sofas in the parlor, Francis and Constance would find her, and if she was below-stairs with the servants, then Dawson would see her. Or, I suppose, she might be in the carriage house with the gardener. None of us knew whether he was young and good-looking and whether she might have been carrying on an illicit affair with him behind everyone’s back.
But she hadn’t. Or if she had, it wasn’t where she had spent the night. That became obvious as soon as Christopher pushed open the door to Lady Peckham’s room.
I guess I should call it the Dowager’s Chamber, actually, since there ought to be a Dowager’s Chamber in the Dower House in the same way that there’s a Duke’s Chamber and a Duchess’s Chamber at Sutherland Hall.
Anyway, Christopher opened the door to Lady Peckham’s room and we saw Johanna lying on the bed.
We caught our breath at the same time, and I saw Christopher’s hand go white around the doorknob.
“Johanna?” I ventured. “Miss de Vos?”
There was no response, of course. Nor had I expected one, but you have to try, don’t you?
