Page 18 of Lies in Little Sutherland
“If it’s the truth, I don’t see that they have a choice.If none of the rest of you had opportunity, and I did, but I didn’t do it, then it was someone else.Perhaps she has made enemies since she came here.Was she objectionable, Constance?”
“No more than anyone else,” Constance said and took her hands away from her face before sitting up.“Mother seemed to like her well enough.”
“This was the maid you told me about, who spent all her time dressing your mother and her ward, and no time helping you, correct?”
She nodded.“But I didn’t mind that, Pippa.Certainly not enough to kill her over it.”
“No, of course not.”If Constance had wanted to kill anyone, it would have been Johanna de Vos, and it would have been six months ago.“But you knew her.None of the rest of us did.Was she the type of person to get herself murdered within six months of moving to a new town?”
“Clearly,” Constance said dryly.
I huffed, and she added, “She wasn’t the friendliest person I’ve ever met.Shreve was right about that.She was polite enough to me, I suppose, and she doted on Johanna, but even after twenty years in Dorset, I don’t think she had made many friends.She always seemed to think herself too good to fraternize with Cook and the kitchen maid, and she and Shreve clearly didn’t get along well.”
No, they hadn’t seemed to, and that hadn’t been because Morrison thought she was better, since Shreve and Morrison had had the same job.Shreve’s was even a bit more privileged, I would venture, since Shreve dressed the Countess of Marsden and Morrison merely dressed the Dowager Lady Peckham.
So perhaps Morrison had been envious, and that was why the two maids hadn’t gotten along.
“But you think it’s possible that she came here, and made herself so objectionable that someone decided to get rid of her?”
“Anything’s possible,” Constance said.
Yes, of course.I glanced at the door.“I wonder if there are clues in there.”
“Constable Woodin would kill you if you went looking for them,” Christopher said.
I looked over at him.“Not if he didn’t know I had done.”
He didn’t say anything to that, and I added, “Surely you didn’t expect me to sit here and wait politely while there’s a crime scene on the other side of the door?”
He shot me a look.“Haven’t you seen enough crime scenes, Pippa?”
I had done, to be honest.More than enough.However— “It seems as if I might be a suspect in this one.”
“That should make you more eager to keep your distance,” Christopher said.
“But what if I notice something that proves I couldn’t have done it?Or something that proves that someone else did?”
He didn’t answer, and I added, persuasively, “There’s plenty of time, and nothing to do but sit here.If it takes thirty minutes to bicycle to Stow-on-the-Wold, it’ll take Francis ten or fifteen to motor there.Then they have to make their report, notify the doctor, and arrange for a delegation to come back this way.All I want to do, is go inside and look around before anyone comes to catch me at it.”
“Then go,” Christopher said.“But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I got to my feet, but hesitated.“You don’t want to come with me?”
He made a face.“I’ve had enough of corpses for a while, Pippa.I spent entirely too long locked in with the one at Thornton Heath.”
“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely.“That must have been awful for you.But this one won’t smell, you know.She hasn’t been dead long enough for that.”
“Nonetheless, I think I shall stay out here, where the air is fresh.”He tilted his head back and flared his nostrils.And lowered it again to ask, “Are you afraid to go in by yourself?”
“Not afraid,” I demurred.“I would just… like to have company.”
I waited, but no one offered to come with me.Both Christopher and I avoided, quite diligently, looking at Constance.After a long moment fraught with silence, she sighed.“You’re shameless, the both of you.”
I smiled.“I knew if I waited long enough, you’d agree to go with me.”
“And you knew Morrison,” Christopher added.“It wouldn’t hurt for you to take a look.At the moment, we don’t even know that it’s Morrison upstairs, and not someone else.”
“That’s a good point,” I agreed.“There’s no reason to think it isn’t Morrison, of course, but it’s just as well to make sure of it.And since I’ve never set eyes on her…”
