Page 60 of Death at the Dower House
“Inspector Pendennis’s compliments, miss. He wonders if you could spare him a moment of your time.”
“Of course.” I got to my feet. Every eye in the room watched me as I walked to the door. A few were speculative—Marsden and Peckham, mostly. Some were worried: Constance and Christopher. Francis looked, strangely, almost amused, while Lady Laetitia was staring daggers at my back. Had looks been able to kill, I would have buckled at the knees on my way to the door.
I guess perhaps she thought Crispin had asked for me. What was much more likely, of course, was that I was just next in line for some clarifying question or other the inspector had after going over the interviews Tom had already done.
The young constable walked me across the reception room to the library, knocked once, and pushed the door open. “Miss Darling, sir.”
“Thank you, Collins,” Pendennis grunted. “You can go on up and help Finchley with the rest of the fingerprints.”
“Thank you, sir!” Collins ran off as if this was a real treat, and not, as I would have assumed, a rather tedious aspect of his job.
“Come in, Miss Darling. Close the door behind you.”
I walked in and closed the door behind me. And crossed the floor to the same table where I had sat with Christopher earlier, across from Tom. Now it was Crispin who sat in the chair I’d been sitting in earlier, like a pale distortion of Christopher. Lighter hair, colorless eyes, pale skin.
Quite pale, in fact. Rather worryingly so. I frowned at him, but he didn’t try to communicate anything to me, which was probably for the best, seeing as Pendennis was sitting there on the other side of the table turning a pen over in his hand.
He was rather deliberately perusing a piece of paper that was on the desk in front of him. But I didn’t doubt that he was aware of every breath Crispin took.
And mine as well.
So I smiled brightly and took the chair next to Crispin. “Inspector Pendennis. It’s nice to see you again, even if the circumstances aren’t any better than last time.”
“Miss Darling.” Pendennis didn’t waste time with niceties. “What can you tell me about this?”
He whipped it out like a conjurer, and spread it in front of me on the table.
I blinked. It was a square of fine linen, wrinkled and stained, with a set of initials embroidered in the corner. CAH.
“It’s a man’s handkerchief,” I said.
Pendennis nodded. “Whose?”
I glanced sideways at the man who sat silently next to me. “His.”
There was absolutely no point in lying about it, since anyone in the house would have been able to identify this particular handkerchief. “The A is for Astley, the H for Henry. Christopher’s handkerchief would have the monogram CAN, the N for Nicholas. Francis would have had an F, of course.”
Pendennis nodded. “Is that the only reason you know that it belongs to the viscount?”
I shook my head. “I saw him use it yesterday. We all did. The pink smears all over it are from Lady Laetitia Marsden’s lipstick, which she got all over his mouth before supper.”
Crispin looked rather wooden over that statement. So, in point of fact, did Pendennis. “Tell me about that,” he said.
Crispin shifted on his chair. I slanted him a look before I asked the inspector, “Surely you’ve read the statements? She arrived with her brother in time for supper, and when she saw St George, she squealed with delight and then ran across the room and attached her lips to his face like a succubus. Her brother had to remove her, forcibly, when it had gone on for long enough that there started to be concern for his ability to breathe.”
“I see,” Pendennis said solemnly, but not without a twinkle in his eye.
I nodded. “It was frankly appalling. You ought to have stopped it yourself long before it got to that point, St George.”
He arched a brow. “Apologies, Darling. I didn’t realize it bothered you.”
“Well, you should have. It bothered all of us. The whole thing was horrifically embarrassing. Poor Constance was as red as a beet.”
“What happened next?” Pendennis wanted to know.
I flicked Crispin another look. “I ascertained that St George’s soul was intact and informed him that he had lipstick all over his face. He used the pocket square to remove what he could of it.”
It was semi-permanent lipstick, so there had still been hints of it about his lips several hours later, when we’d been dancing together in the parlor.
