Page 80 of Death at the Dower House
At any rate, it wasn’t terribly surprising that someone like Lady Laetitia, who I judged as quite high strung to begin with, might have become a little overwrought by her (self-imposed) role as mistress of ceremonies for the séance. When the knock on the door had come, seemingly in response to her request for a sign, it had taken me a moment of elevated heartbeat and cold sweat to put two and two together, too.
Not that I had any intention of admitting that.
“I don’t believe in the supernatural,” I said firmly, and watched Constance’s face drop. “I admit it was all very eerie. But I think that was partly the atmosphere, you know? The darkness and the sound of people’s heartbeats and Marsden’s foot chasing mine under the table…”
Constance tittered, but persisted. “But you don’t think there’s anything to it? That the dead can…” She hesitated, “—communicate from where they are?”
I hesitated, too. It was clear what she was talking about, after all, and I didn’t want to cause her undue pain if she had gathered some comfort from believing that her mother still existed and was at peace somewhere. So much had happened today that it felt like an eternity had passed since this morning, but it was less than twelve hours since Constance had learned that she had lost not just her… almost-sister? almost-friend? friendly enemy?… but her mother, as well. Even if she clearly hadn’t cared much for Johanna, they must have had a relationship of some sort. They’d spent years across the hall from one another, after all. Years of meals and shopping trips and passing each other going in and out of the lavatory door. I don’t care much for St George, but we’ve spent years as part of the same family, and if he died, I certainly wouldn’t be able to act as if nothing had happened less than twelve hours later.
And then her mother. While there’d undoubtedly been resentment there—I had seen it myself—Lady Peckham had been Constance’smother. She had dried her tears as a child, and had read her stories—unless there’d been a nanny for that—and they must have had a more normal mother-daughter relationship at some point, before Johanna came along and took Constance’s place.
Or maybe they hadn’t. Maybe the relationship had always been peculiarly unloving, with Lady P showering all her attention on Gilbert before Johanna came along, so Constance always got the short end of the stick. Maybe she truly had killed them both, and I was simply spinning stories about things that hadn’t been true.
But if not, if Constance had lost a mother and a girl she had grown up with today, then I owed her some consolation and sympathy.
So I thought back to what she’d asked before I’d gone on my track of causes and counter-causes—could the dead communicate from where they were?—and said, carefully, “I’ll admit I’m not terribly superstitious myself. And I certainly don’t believe in Laetitia Marsden as a spiritualist.”
She tittered, and I added, “But do I think there’s something after death? Absolutely. We all lost so many people during the war and after, in the influenza epidemic. I lost my mother and father, and my cousin, and I’m just one person. I’m sure Francis’s loss was magnitudes greater than mine. He lost his brother, and I’m sure untold numbers of friends and allies over the couple of years he spent fighting. I don’t think they just vanished. I think, after what they went through and what they sacrificed, they went somewhere better.”
“Yes,” Constance whispered.
“And if they’re somewhere, then I suppose it’s possible that they’re able to communicate from there. Perhaps even in spite of Lady Laetitia. Your mother seemed to me to be a strong-willed sort of woman when I met her…”
Constance nodded, sniffling. There were tears in her eyes that she fought to hold back.
“If she wanted to communicate to you and your brother that she’s at peace and comfortable, I think she could maneuver around Laetitia Marsden’s shenanigans, and any of our doubts and reservations, to do it.”
Constance nodded. “Thank you, Pippa.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said, completely sincerely, since I wasn’t sure whether I believed what I had told her or not. That there was something after death, certainly. I don’t think—I don’t want to think—that people just die and are gone. I wanted to believe that my mother and father, and Cousin Robbie, and the late Duke of Sutherland, and Crispin’s mother, and Grimsby, and Lady Peckham, and yes, even Johanna… that they were somewhere nice, somewhere they were at peace beyond all the cares and worries that had been their lives. At least some of them deserved that.
Whether they could come back and communicate that to us? That was a different story. And that Lady Peckham had come back and done just that? Very doubtful indeed.
But of course I didn’t tell Constance that. I just reached out and took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m sure your mother is somewhere better than here. Somewhere peaceful and lovely, where there’s no pain and no cares or worries. Johanna, too.”
“I don’t care about Johanna,” Constance said, clutching my hand. Tears were gathering in her eyes again. “That’s a horrible thing to say, but I don’t. I didn’t like her.”
“I didn’t either, so I can hardly blame you for that.”
She sniffed. “She took my mother and my brother away from me. To Mother, she was the daughter I’d never been. The pretty one, the one who cared about all the things Mother thought were important. Pretty dresses, and handsome men, and estates and titles and money.”
I nodded. “I’m sure your mother was a great beauty in her day.” Back in the Gay Nineties of the previous century. The era of wasp waists and padded bosoms and fluttery fans. The young Lady P had been the toast of London, no doubt, along with Aunt Charlotte, who had also been exactly that type. No wonder they’d been friends.
“And Gilbert,” Constance said. “We always had a good relationship, you know. We’re only a year and a little more apart in age. We played together a lot as children, and he never thought I fell short. I was his sister, and he loved me. He actually probably liked that he didn’t have to fend off his friends’ advances on my behalf, that I wasn’t the kind of girl who made men flutter around. We were happy. Untilshecame.”
The level of poison she managed to put into that single pronoun was quite astonishing.
“And she was everything I wasn’t. Mother liked her better than me, and all of Gilbert’s friends started coming around more, but not for Gilbert—or for me, of course. It was all for Johanna. Gilbert became exceedingly popular. And then he started spending all his time with her. Escorting her to luncheons and balls. Leaving me to fend for myself.”
“That must have been difficult,” I said, as I tried—and failed—to imagine Christopher abandoning me at home to escort some other cousin, prettier and more sought after, to balls and luncheons.
“I hated her,” Constance said through tears. “She absorbed all the attention. Whenever she walked into a room, no one saw me. Not even my own family.”
I couldn’t even imagine, honestly. I had shown up on the doorstop of the Astley family at eleven, long-legged and skinny and awkward, at the beginning of a war in which my father fought on the other side. It might have been my father who killed Robert, and no one had ever said it, or made me feel any different because of it. I had been Aunt Roz’s dear niece from the moment I arrived, and Francis’s and Robbie’s Pipsqueak, and Christopher’s best friend and almost-sister. Even Crispin, for all his dislike of me—and of the way I had taken Christopher’s time and attention from him—had never made me feel like I wasn’t part of the family.
“I don’t care where Johanna is,” Constance said wetly. “I don’t care whether she’s at peace or not. I don’t care about her. But I don’t want my mother to suffer. I was angry with her, but I wouldn’t want her to suffer. You don’t think she suffered, do you, Pippa?”
“When she died, do you mean?” I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Constance. I think she just took a swallow or two of her medicine, or what she thought was her medicine, and went to sleep, and just never woke up.”
