Page 50 of Death at the Dower House
Silence reigned after that. Constance made an effort to get her tears under control, while Gilbert just looked wan and pale on the other side of the table. Whatever Lady Peckham had been to the Marsdens—aunt? Second cousin?—neither of them seemed affected by her death, or even by that of Johanna.
Francis came back fairly quickly. He had been so preoccupied with Constance last night that he probably hadn’t noticed much of what was going on with the rest of us, and so he didn’t know anything that could help Tom. As for his having had anything to do with Lady Peckham’s demise, the idea was ludicrous, although I imagined Tom had probably brought up the question of Francis’s Veronal. Whatever the answer had been, Francis didn’t look discomfited by it. He took my place next to Constance, and I moved to sit beside Christopher while Francis informed his cousin that his presence was requested in the library next.
Crispin looked resigned but not worried when he got to his feet and headed out.
The door shut behind him. A moment passed, and then Gilbert Peckham and Geoffrey Marsden exchanged a glance. “It has to be him,” Marsden said, “don’t you think?”
Laetitia sucked in a breath. Peckham nodded, eyeing Crispin’s nearest and dearest sitting on the other side of the table as if assessing us.
“I beg your pardon?” I said, while Francis began, “Listen, you—”
“Did you just accuse my cousin of murder?” Christopher wanted to know.
Peckham looked apologetic. “He’s the one with the motive and opportunity, wouldn’t you say? The two of you—” meaning Christopher and Francis, “went up to bed together. He stayed behind. And I know he said he didn’t see her, but they were both outside in the garden. He could have talked to Johanna and arranged an assignation in my mother’s room later.”
He could have. Of course he could. I’d seen them together, and the kiss could absolutely have culminated in an agreement to rendezvous in the Dowager’s Chamber once everyone else was in bed.
“He might even have walked in with her,” Peckham added. “He says he saw me in the parlor, but I didn’t see him. For all I know, Johanna was with him.”
I supposed she might have been. If no one had seen Crispin come in and go upstairs, he could have been with anyone.
Or alone, as he claimed.
And then Peckham drove the knife home with a final question. “Who else would she have let into her bedroom last night, but the man she wanted to marry?”
There was a moment of silence while I—while we all—pondered that extremely salient point.
“I don’t believe it,” Francis said eventually.
I shook my head. “Nor do I. And besides, if there was truly only twenty minutes between the time Christopher and Francis went upstairs, and when Crispin came into the room they shared, there was no time for him to kill anyone.”
You’ll surely have gathered by now that I don’t have a terribly high opinion of St George. There isn’t much I wouldn’t believe him capable of. But to strangle a woman in cold blood, a woman he had just been kissing, and then to walk from where he had killed her directly into his bedroom, where two of the people who knew him best in the world were waiting, and not give away an inkling of what he had done? No, I couldn’t talk myself into believing him capable of that.
Besides, the kiss in the garden hadn’t looked as if it would turn to violence in the blink of an eye.
“Perhaps the assignation was for later,” Marsden suggested, with a sideways look at his sister. “Perhaps he went upstairs, waited for you both to fall asleep, and then went across the landing to Lady Marsden’s room, where he killed Johanna.”
“You can’t be serious, Geoffrey,” Laetitia said.
I nodded, even as it galled me to have to agree with her. “Christopher would have heard him leave. He’s a light sleeper.”
“You would know,” Marsden said, which I decided not to dignify with an answer, mostly because I didn’t want to descend to his level.
Christopher, however, narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Marsden looked at him down his nose. “You and Miss Darling share a flat, I thought?”
“Oh,” Christopher said. “Yes. We do.”
Marsden nodded. “There you have it.”
There was nothing much one could say to that, either. I could hear the insinuation, of course, and so could Christopher—so could anyone present—but anything I might say would only make Marsden think worse of both of us.
“At any rate,” I said, “there are people here with better motives and opportunities for murder than St George.”
I didn’t eye Lady Laetitia when I said it, but I didn’t have to. She tossed her neck. “I had no reason to kill her, you daft cow. I’m Lady Laetitia Marsden. She was a penniless refugee from the Continent with no title and no money. Do you really suppose he’d choose her over me?”
“He’d already had you,” I said, stung a little in spite of myself. Not that I wanted St George, butIwas a penniless refugee from the Continent too, and at some point I expected I would want someone to want me, even if it wasn’t someone of St George’s social standing. “Maybe he just wasn’t impressed.”
