Page 86 of Death at the Dower House
“Stop it, Francis!” Crispin was saying now. “You’re hurting him. Stop it!”
He physically threw himself at Francis and pushed him back from the bed, forcing him to let Christopher go. Christopher flopped down on the mattress, lifelessly, and Francis bared his teeth in a snarl. For a moment or two, I was afraid he’d hit Crispin, and not in the way we’d joked about on the landing earlier.
No, his whole body went taut, his hands clenched, his muscles bunching with effort. He was bigger than Crispin—than Christopher, too. Stockier by nature, more muscular with age. Crispin and Christopher were both still boyish, slighter, without Francis’s packed muscles.
If Francis wanted to, or if he lost control, he could do lasting damage to anyone who stood in his way. Which was exactly where Crispin had put himself: between Francis and Christopher.
I held my breath, waiting.
Crispin didn’t. He wasn’t worried, or didn’t seem to be. Perhaps he just didn’t understand how far he had pushed Francis. Francis had lost one brother; he clearly wasn’t about to lose another. Not if there was anything he could do about it.
And that included waking Christopher from the dead himself, through sheer force of will.
But Crispin didn’t even seem to realize it. He knocked Francis back a step and turned his back on him, as if he weren’t worried at all.
“Kit.” His voice was soft, and his hand gentle when he put it on Christopher’s chest. “Can you hear me, Kit?”
There was no answer from Christopher, and Crispin moved his hand from Christopher’s chest to his throat, and from there to his cheek. Behind him, Francis shifted from one foot to the other, fists still clenching and unclenching as he undoubtedly had to talk himself out of going for Crispin’s throat when it was obvious that Crispin wasn’t doing anything to harm Christopher.
When he pushed one of Christopher’s eyelids up and bent over him, it ended in an irritated huff. “Can’t anyone light a candle or find a torch? I can’t see!”
“I sent—” My voice was froggy, and I cleared it. “Constance went downstairs to look at the fuse panel. Hopefully—”
And yes, just like clockwork, like an answer to prayer, the landing lit up. Or at least it felt as if it did. The light was actually pretty faint, spilling up the stairs from the reception room downstairs, but it was electric light, and after so much darkness, it felt like a flood of brightness.
Francis lunged for the lamp at the bedside and flicked it on. Light streamed from that, too, and we all squinted against it as it lit up Christopher’s face and Crispin’s finger, holding Christopher’s eyelid back.
Francis let out awhooshof breath—relief, I thought—and Crispin nodded, with a relieved—if less explosive—exhale of his own. But before he could say anything, there was the clatter and patter of footsteps on the stairs. Two pairs: Constance’s almost silent bare feet, and a pair of heavier shoes that thumped on each step. I expected Constance to be accompanied by her brother, but instead it was Tom who burst through the door just ahead of her.
He took in the scene in a single glance, and his jaw dropped. Constance, meanwhile, threw herself at Francis, whose arms came up just in time to catch her.
“Kit!” Crispin was forced to take a step back as Tom lunged for the bedside and began going through the same cycle of tests that Crispin had employed. Chest, throat, cheek, eye.
“He’s doped to the gills,” Crispin commented calmly, as if, just a few seconds prior to this, we hadn’t all been frantic with worry. “His pupils contracted when the light came on, so he’s responding to stimuli. He’s breathing and his heart’s beating, but it’s slow.”
Tom shot him a look. “Had some experience with dope, have you?”
Crispin just shrugged, since the answer was obvious. “Better find him a doctor, don’t you think?”
I looked from one to the other of them. “What do you mean, he’s doped? Christopher doesn’t take dope!”
“He did tonight,” Crispin said, and I rounded on him.
“What do you mean, you utter twit? We spent the evening together! I would know if Christopher had taken dope, and so would you! We were together most of the time.”
“I spent the latter part of the evening with Laetitia,” Crispin corrected, without so much as a glance out the door and across the landing at the room where Lady Laetitia was still sniffling.
“Well, I spent it with Christopher, and I would have seen him do something that stupid. We live together, and I’m telling you, Christopher doesn’t take dope!”
“Then someone else gave it to him,” Tom said, from where he was still bent over Christopher’s prone body. Now that the light was on, I could see that Christopher was, indeed, alive. He was breathing, slowly but steadily, even if his chest didn’t rise or fall far inside the striped pyjama top. And of course he wasn’t responsive at all, to Francis’s shaking or shouts, Crispin’s firm administrations, and—now—to Tom’s clinical examination.
Francis made an inarticulate sound, and abandoned Constance to run to one of the weekender bags. He fell to his knees next to it. Seconds later, things started flying from inside to land on the floor all around. Shaving tackle, suspenders, cufflinks, unmentionables…
Then he rose to his feet with a cry, small twists of paper clutched in both hands, cheeks flushed in what looked like anger.
We were all staring at him by then, and now Constance let out a moan. She wasn’t looking at his face, however, but at the papers in his hands. Crispin’s lips were compressed in a tight line that was quite different from his usually expressive pout, while Tom looked serious.
“How much is missing?” he asked.
