Page 47 of Death at the Dower House
“At any rate,” I told Tom, “they fought over him all evening. If Laetitia thought their affair was in the past, she showed no signs of it.”
“But neither of you saw either of them after you left the parlor last night?”
Christopher and I both shook our heads. I did it with a smidgeon of guilt, because I liked Tom, and I knew I was helping Crispin lie to Scotland Yard. I did it nonetheless.
Tom already knew that Johanna had run into the garden after Crispin last night. Whether they’d kissed or not didn’t really make a difference. Did it? She hadn’t been murdered until later. And Crispin might just have wanted to keep the encounter from Laetitia while we were all sitting around the dining room table. Once they were in the library alone, he might tell Tom all about it.
And if he didn’t, I could always tell Tom about it myself later.
“I know you already told me about finding Miss de Vos’s body,” Tom said, “but go through that again, for the record.”
We went through it again, while Tom asked questions we mostly couldn’t answer, since neither of us had really noticed much but the fact that Johanna was dead.
“Just go look at her yourself,” I told him eventually. “She’ll look exactly the same as she did when we saw her. We didn’t touch anything. It was clear from the start that there was nothing we could do for her. So we locked the door and gave Dawson the key,. No one will have been in the room since then.”
Tom nodded. “Anything else you think I ought to know?”
Christopher shook his head.
“I heard someone out on the landing in the middle of the night,” I said. “It was after Constance came up to bed. I was restless, and woke up a few times. Once, it was because I heard steps outside the door. No one touched the knob or tried to get inside. But I heard someone walk past the door and hesitate, then continue. And the sound of a door closing somewhere else on the landing.”
“You didn’t get up to see who it was?”
“I didn’t think it was any of my business if St George was creeping around going to or coming from an assignation,” I said. “And just in case it was Lord Geoffrey, I didn’t want to come face to face with him in the darkness outside my room.”
“Any idea of the time?”
“After two but before dawn. I had fallen asleep again since Constance woke me. I don’t think I can be more specific than that.”
“I’ll just have to figure out who might have been out of bed at that hour,” Tom said and made a note. “Anything else?”
I couldn’t think of anything else. Not that I was willing to share, anyway. “I don’t suppose you can tell us anything about what happened to Lady Peckham?”
“Right now,” Tom said, “you know as much as I do. The others may have discovered something since I left, but as soon as we learned who she was and that you were here, I volunteered to come down ahead of the others and get started.”
“You think one of us did it.”
Or perhaps not one of us, specifically. Neither Christopher nor I had any reason to want Lady Peckham out of the way. But one of the people who lived in this house.
“I don’t think anyone still left at Sutherland Hall would have had a motive for wanting her dead,” Tom said. “Not your parents, certainly. Unless you think your Uncle Harold is emulating Doctor Crippin and doing away with his wives and prospective wives all of a sudden?”
Christopher shook his head. So did I.
“It’s logical to look at the people who knew her best. The medicine bottle was one of her own. The Veronal might have been added at Sutherland Hall, or it could have been done here. It depends on the last time she took a dose of it. For all we know, the Veronal could have been in the bottle for weeks. Tell me about Lady Peckham’s relationship to her children.”
I looked at Christopher. He looked at me.
“We don’t know them well—” I began.
“You went to school with Miss Peckham, didn’t you?”
“Five years at Godolphin in Salisbury,” I confirmed. “The same five years that Christopher and Crispin were at Eton.”
Where Tom had also been, although it had been his last year when it was their first. He was twenty-seven or so now, the same age as my late cousin Robert.
“And since?”
“I haven’t really seen her since. We weren’t close. She was very shy and retiring, and I—”
