Page 88 of Death at the Dower House
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Tom said grimly, and Constance, now clinging to Francis’s arm, whimpered.
“Perhaps he went below-stairs to talk to Dawson?” I suggested, since I was honestly a bit surprised that the staff—or at least Dawson and Nigel the hallboy—weren’t milling around with the rest of us, trying to determine what was going on.
“There’s a lot of padding between downstairs and up,” Constance said apologetically, her voice soft. “Mother—”
She had to stop to clear her throat. “Mother didn’t like to hear the sound of the servants moving about.”
Of course not. God forbid that the other people who lived in her house, the people who made her life comfortable, made too much noise. She had probably been the kind of mother who believed that children should be seen and not heard, too. That would explain rather a lot about Constance, actually.
“Never mind Dawson,” I told Tom, “or for that matter Gilbert Peckham.” If he wasn’t dead in bed, who cared about him? “What areyoudoing here? Didn’t you tell us earlier that you were going to the village for the rest of the night? You couldn’t have heard the screaming all the way from there. I know Lady Laetitia was loud, but surely she wasn’t that loud?”
Laetitia sniffed, deeply insulted, but she didn’t say anything. Couldn’t deny it, I suppose.
“Where’s St George?” she asked instead, with a flick of her eyelashes at me. And then, when she realized he wasn’t present, “Dear Lord, has something happened to St George?”
I opened my mouth to reassure her—or more honestly, I suppose, I opened my mouth to say something scathing—but before I could, Tom told her, “St George is sitting with Christopher Astley. They’re both fine. Or will be. Can anyone tell me what happened tonight?”
“I woke up,” Lady Laetitia declared, “with the overwhelming feeling that there was a presence in my room.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes, but only barely. “Left over from the séance earlier, I suppose? Did you get the impression that it was Lady Peckham, or Johanna? Or perhaps someone else? My cousin Robbie, perhaps? My father?”
“I don’t know who it was,” Laetitia said, and under the circumstances, I had to—much as I hated to do it—commend her for the dignity she managed to show in not snapping back at me. “It was dark, and I had been asleep, and when I woke up, someone was leaning over me. I couldn’t make out his—or her—features. It was very dark. But I could hear someone breathe. And feel it. Hot on my face.”
She shuddered, and if it was feigned, she could have given the divine Josephine a run for her money.
“What happened then?” Tom wanted to know. He sounded, thankfully, not at all influenced by her lurid tale.
“I screamed,” Laetitia said simply. “And I continued to scream. When I opened my eyes again—”
I got a mental picture of her, eyes squeezed shut and mouth wide open, that was not at all flattering.
“—the figure was gone. I was alone in my room.”
Francis leaned down and murmured something to Constance. She nodded. I didn’t have to be next to them to guess that Francis had chalked the whole thing up to an overwrought imagination after the séance, and Constance had agreed.
Laetitia didn’t pay them any attention. “But it was dark,” she continued with a shiver, “and my lamp didn’t work. I heard noises outside my room. Feet running. And then Geoffrey came in and held me, and I felt better.”
The look she gave her brother was one of adoration. And much as I disliked Lord Geoffrey and his wandering hands, I was glad that at least he treated his sister right when she needed him.
“Did he say anything?” Tom asked. And clarified, “This shadow you said you saw. The figure in your room. Did he say anything?”
“He said…” Laetitia gulped. “He said, ‘you know what you did. You should confess.’”
There was a pause as we all digested this statement.
“And what did you do,” Tom asked finally, dryly, “that you need to come clean about?”
Francis whispered something else to Constance, who nodded. Again, I could guess what it was, and agreed with it. There hadn’t been anyone in Laetitia’s room. Between the excitement of the séance and whatever it was she had done, her own guilty conscience had caused her to imagine the figure and the words.
She glanced at me, almost as if she could feel my disbelief, and then looked away again. Her mouth opened, but if something came out, it was too faint for me to hear.
“What was that?” Tom leaned closer.
“I gave Gilbert,” Laetitia whispered, “a few grains of a sleeping powder and told him to put them in Miss Darling’s drink when he mixed it.”
“What?”
It wasn’t Francis’s voice, as I might have expected it to be. And of course it wasn’t Christopher’s. He was unconscious in the other room.
