Page 79 of Death at the Dower House
He merely shrugged, and I added, “I’m sharing with Constance. We’ll be all right.”
“What if you’re wrong about Constance, and she’s the killer?”
“Then I suppose I’m just out of luck,” I said. “There’s nowhere else I can sleep. I can’t share with Laetitia, for obvious reasons, and the Dowager’s Chamber is off limits. And I hope you’re not suggesting that I share with you?”
He glanced at Christopher, and then back at me. “You’d be safer with us than anywhere else. At least, with four of us in the same room, no one would get at you.”
“But Laetitia would have a fit, her brother and Peckham would both be scandalized, and so, undoubtedly, would Constance. I’m better off where I am.”
I hesitated a moment before I added, “I don’t really think it’s Constance, anyway. She has the motive, but I don’t think she has the personality. And I’m not sure she’d actually be strong enough to strangle Johanna.”
Crispin watched Constance, small and dainty beside Francis, for a moment before he nodded. “Still, be careful.”
“You, too,” I told him. “Better get back to Laetitia. She’s put her brother and Peckham in their places and is staring at you. If she thinks you’re not paying enough attention to her, she might decide to kill you and not me.”
He rolled his eyes, but nodded. “See you later, Kit. Keep an eye on her.”
He vanished, back across the floor to where Laetitia was waiting, ostrich feather fan tapping impatiently at her thigh.
“Her?” I inquired.
“You,” Christopher said.
“I never thought I’d see the day when Crispin St George was concerned about my safety.”
I was still watching as he crossed the floor, and when he reached her, Laetitia lifted the fan and tapped him on the cheek with it. I winced.
“Looks like it goes both ways,” Christopher said blandly.
I glanced at him. “There was absolutely no need for her to hit him. That wasn’t a love tap, in case you didn’t notice. Not quite the same as the full palm and four fingers, but it got the point across.”
“I guess she’s making sure he knows what happens if he thinks about straying again before she’s done with him.”
So it seemed. “Make sure he gets in safely tonight, too, Christopher. I don’t want you to keep all your attention on me while she murders him behind some door somewhere. Your mother told me to make sure he didn’t get himself in trouble while we were here. I think she was mostly concerned that he’d end up in some sort of breach of promise suit or something like that, but I don’t think she’d want him to be murdered, either.”
“Likely not,” Christopher agreed. “I’ll make sure you both get to bed in one piece. And you’re sure you’ll be safe with Constance?”
“I’ll borrow a bread knife from the kitchen and hide it under the mattress if you think it’s necessary,” I said, “but yes, I think I’ll be safe with Constance. Even if she did kill her mother and Johanna, she has no reason to kill me. I didn’t like them either, and she knows it.”
Christopher looked unconvinced, and I added, “And if she says or does anything strange before we go to bed, I’ll come find you and spend the night with you instead, even if it would scandalize everyone else in the house. At least it would make St George’s day. Or night.”
“That would do it,” Christopher agreed, and let the subject rest.
Eighteen
“What didyou think of the séance?” Constance wanted to know as we were getting ready for bed.
I had already changed into the blue silk pyjamas Aunt Roz had given me for Christmas last year, and I was sitting on the bed, arms around my knees, watching Constance get ready. Unlike me, she dressed not in modern pyjamas, but in a soft, white, lawn nightgown with embroideries, very two decades ago.
It suited her, though. Even with her bobbed hair, there was something very ingenue and innocent about Constance. She wasn’t a modern girl at all, really, nor did she seem to want to be. Under the modern hairstyle and red lipstick—which she only wore sparingly—was a traditional girl with old-fashioned sensibilities who dreamed about a husband and babies.
“I think Lady Laetitia is full of—”
I stopped myself before I could complete the sentence and tell her what I really thought, but Constance caught enough to giggle anyway. “She believes it enough to faint when that handsome policeman knocked on the door, anyway.”
Yes, she had. Although it had been (somewhat) easy to believe at that point.
Not that I had. Believed, I mean. But after a long time of sitting in the dark, listening to everyone breathe, with the flickering candles and the darkness pressing in from all sides, and the eerie sensation of the glass moving on its own, even when you know it isn’t possible for a glass to move across a surface independently and spell out words…
