Page 17 of Lies in Little Sutherland
“Thirty minutes, if I pedal fast.”
He grinned.Francis sighed.“Get in the motorcar.I’ll take you there.”
“What about these three?”Woodin gestured to us.
“We can all squeeze in,” I said, “if you’re afraid that we’re going to contaminate your crime scene if you leave us here.Although, if we stay, we can make sure that no one else walks into the cottage.”
He squinted at me.And it was a difficult decision, I could see that.I didn’t particularly want to squeeze into the Crossley like a sardine in a can, and I could tell that Woodin didn’t, either.He was a strapping, young specimen, with broad shoulders and muscular thighs underneath the regulation trousers.Much more Francis’s type than Christopher’s.Or if he was Christopher’s type, it was in a totally different way.There was a faint resemblance to Tom Gardiner there, and it wasn’t just because they were both policemen.
But that’s neither here nor there.Leaving the three of us, with our no doubt concerning history with dead bodies, unsupervised outside a fresh crime scene, can’t have been a comfortable notion, either.
“We won’t touch anything,” I assured him.“We swear.Don’t we, Christopher?Constance?”
They both nodded, young and innocent and big-eyed.
“The longer we stand here and discuss it, the longer the body will lie up there,” Francis said, and that seemed to make the difference.Woodin glanced at him, and something passed between them—perhaps a memory of bodies in the trenches, who knows?—and then Woodin nodded.
“We’ll be as quick as we can,” Francis told the rest of us.“Do you want to come with us, Connie, or stay here?”
“I’ll stay,” Constance said.
And that was that.The two men walked out through the garden gate into Upper Slaughter—Constable Woodin shut the kitchen door behind him in a rather pointed manner first—and then Christopher closed the garden gate behind them.It was just as well to make sure no random passers-by could peer into the courtyard and see us standing here, really.And then the three of us looked at one another.
“Sit?”Christopher suggested, nodding to the bench against the wall.
“Don’t mind if I do.”I took Constance’s arm and headed for it.It was long enough to accommodate all three of us, so a moment later she was sitting between us.
Silence descended.Albeit only for a moment, until Christopher broke it again.
“I can’t believe we motored all the way here for this.”
“Bythis,” I said, “I assume you mean another dead body?”
“That, but also the fact that we’re sitting here waiting for an influx of constables.Not to mention that we seem to be suspects.”
I shook my head.“I’m certain we’re not, Christopher.I’ve never in my life met Morrison.Nor have you.Why would we kill her?”
“I knew her,” Constance’s voice said, sepulcherally, from behind her hands.
I peered down at her bowed head.“But nobody would suspectyouof murder.”
Constance looks like the very epitome of the well-bred English gentlewoman, who would never raise a hand against anyone.
Of course, so had Aunt Charlotte, and she had managed to off several people before doing away with herself, but that was neither here nor there.I knew Charlotte.Had done since I was thirteen, and she would never do such a thing.
“Woodin doesn’t know that,” Constance said.
Perhaps not.But?—
“I’m certain Francis will set him straight.They seemed to get on well, didn’t they?”
“Let’s hope so,” Christopher said grimly, “because this is all more coincidental than I like.What are the chances that Morrison has lived here quietly for six months, and then, twelve hours after we hear about her, she’s smothered to death?And we have nothing to do with it?”
The chances of that were not very good, when he put it like that.At least not to someone who didn’t know us.
But nevertheless— “I didn’t motor up here overnight and kill her, Christopher.Why would I do?And none of the rest of you had the time to do it.”
Christopher looked dubious.“But will the police believe that?”
