Page 44 of Death at the Dower House
“I didn’t see him,” Peckham said, “but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”
“Does it matter?” I wanted to know. “We know he came upstairs twenty minutes after Christopher and Francis. Everyone came upstairs eventually. Even Johanna. She wasn’t killed in the garden.”
“How do you know?” someone asked. It wasn’t Tom, and none of the Astleys would have asked such a stupid question. Certainly not Christopher, who had seen the body along with me.
My money was on Marsden, who was rather prone to asking stupid questions.
“Because,” I said, “no one would strangle a woman in the garden and then take the trouble to carry her body into the house and up the stairs to the Dowager’s Chamber. Certainly not with everyone else still awake and walking around. It would be much easier just to leave the body on the grass if it happened that way.”
“He might do it if he was the only one who had gone into the garden, and we all knew it,” Marsden said. It was definitely Marsden this time, and he accompanied the statement with a cold look at Crispin.
Payback for making Marsden’s sister cry, I guessed.
Unless Marsden had killed Johanna and was trying to shove suspicion onto someone else, of course.
Crispin looked at Marsden for a moment, and then he said, “Much as it pains me, I have to agree with Darling. It would have been stupid to carry the body inside when I could have left it in the garden.”
“Maybe you’re stupid,” Marsden said belligerently, and caused Crispin’s lip to twitch with amusement.
“Much as it painsmeto say it,” I answered, “he’s really not.”
Crispin inclined his head. “Thank you, Darling.”
I flicked a glance at him. “Don’t mention it. I think we should probably all just leave the detecting to the professionals. Tom—Detective Sergeant Gardiner—and his colleagues will figure out who killed Johanna. We’d just get in the way.”
It was Tom’s turn to twitch with suppressed laughter. He didn’t know me well, but he knew well enough that I had spent quite a lot of time two weekends ago thinking about who might have killed the late duke and his valet. Staying out of the way isn’t really my forte.
However—
“Thank you, Miss Darling,” he told me, keeping a mostly straight face. “On that note, I think I have the general timeline of the evening straight. It’s time for individual interviews. Is there another room I could use for those, Mr. Peckham?”
“There’s the parlor,” Gilbert said, but Tom shook his head.
“Since you spent the evening in there, I think it’s best if we leave that room undisturbed until I’ve had a chance to look at it.”
“The library?” Constance suggested diffidently.
Tom nodded. “Thank you, Miss Peckham. Miss Darling, Kit, if you’ll come with me? The rest of you stay here with Collins.”
From the glances into the recesses of the room, it was quite clear that several people had forgotten the existence of Constable Collins and his notebook. I wondered how long it would take them to forget it again once we’d walked out.
“Where?”Tom asked when we were outside in the reception room. I indicated the door to the library, and we headed that way.
I’d been inside the library yesterday, looking to see whether there was anything of interest I hadn’t read. There’d been a copy ofThe Moonstone, and several early novels by P.G. Wodehouse, but no recent detective fiction. Neither Gilbert nor Constance had struck me as big readers, nor had Lady Peckham herself. And there was nothing at all in the Dutch language, so if Johanna had had books in her native tongue, she must have kept them in her bed chamber.
We settled around the library table in the middle of the room, with Christopher and me on one side and Tom on the other. He pulled out a notebook and pencil of his own, that looked exactly like the ones Collins had been using in the dining room. They must be standard issue in the police forces.
“Before I start asking questions,” Tom began, “is there anything you want to tell me that you didn’t feel comfortable mentioning in front of the others?”
“There’s Marsden,” Christopher said.
“Lord Geoffrey? What about him?”
“Last night, during the dancing, he made a nuisance of himself with Pippa.” Christopher slanted a look my way. “He touched her, crowded her into a corner of the sofa. Crispin had to rescue her.”
Tom looked surprised. “St George did?”
“He was the one whose attention I could get,” I said. “Francis was dancing with Constance, and seemed quite distracted…”
