Page 51 of Death at the Dower House
Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose you think you could do better?”
Me?I started laughing. “Dear me, no. I have no interest in St George. You’re welcome to him. I told Johanna the same.”
“Kind of you, Darling,” Crispin drawled from behind me, because of course he came back into the dining room just at this moment, “but you do know that I’m not actually yours to dispose of, don’t you?”
“Of course I know,” I said. “Good Lord, St George, it’s not as if I’ve deluded myself into thinking that your need to call me by my last name is actually a cover for any fonder feelings on your part. I’m not stupid, you know.”
“Of course not,” Crispin said and sat down. “Very well, then. Your turn, Marsden.”
Lord Geoffrey pushed to his feet and ambled out.
“I see you’re still walking around,” Peckham told Crispin, who gave him a look down the length of his nose.
“As opposed to being carted off in handcuffs, I suppose?”
“He and Lord Geoffrey have decided you’re guilty of Johanna’s murder,” I told him.
He shot me a look. “Of course they have. I suppose they think I did it in the five minutes between the time I went upstairs and the time I went into the bedroom where Kit and Francis were?”
“Something like that,” I said.
He nodded. “Very good. I’ll just wait to be arrested, then.”
He kicked back in his chair, rested one ankle on the other knee and folded his hands across his stomach, with every appearance of being at his ease.
Marsden’s interview didn’t take long, and then it was Laetitia’s turn. By now, the conversation in the dining room was down to single syllables and long drawn out silences between most of us, and private murmurs between Constance and Francis.
Laetitia looked pale and drawn as she made her way back, and she avoided looking at Crispin. I don’t think he cared, because he wasn’t looking at her either, just kept his eyes on the tulips.
“Your turn, Constance,” Laetitia said, and took her seat. Constance removed her hand from Francis’s with the air of someone going to the gallows.
“Don’t worry,” I told her, surmising that this would be her first interview with a representative of Scotland Yard. “Tom is perfectly lovely.”
Marsden sneered. “First name basis?”
“Friend of the family,” Crispin said without looking up. “We all knew him at Eton. Close friends with my cousin Robert.”
“And where is Robert?” Marsden made a point of looking around the table.
“Somewhere in Belgium,” Crispin said. “He went over in 1917 and didn’t come back.”
His eyes, when they flicked up and fastened on Marsden across the table, were like chips of ice. I didn’t blame Marsden at all for flinching.
“My condolences,” he muttered.
“Thank you,” Francis said, while Crispin said nothing, just lowered his gaze to the flower arrangement again.
By that point, Constance had disappeared through the door into the reception room and we fell back into silence. By now, none of us had anything to say to anyone else. Or rather, I would have liked a conversation with Crispin, but not with an audience, and I could have spoken to either Christopher and Francis, but I didn’t really want to do that while Marsden and Laetitia could hear what I was saying, either. I imagined the others probably felt the same.
So we sat in silence and waited to be dismissed. Constance came back and nodded to her brother. He went out while she sat back down beside Francis.
At the end of the interview with Gilbert, Tom accompanied him back into the dining room. “The police have finished searching your rooms—”
Laetitia opened her mouth in shock, so she must not have realized that that was going on while we were sitting here. Tom ignored her, and so did everyone else.
“—and you’re free to go about your business, but no one is to leave the Dower House without permission. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask those of you who are visiting to stay on until we have a better idea of what’s going on.”
Marsden grimaced. Peckham looked wooden. The rest of us nodded, having been through this at Sutherland Hall just a few weeks ago.
