Page 29 of Lies in Little Sutherland
“We?”Aunt Roz looked from Christopher to me and back.I guess no one thought Constance would have had anything to do with it.
She flushed.“It was me, Roslyn.We wanted to make certain that the dead person was, indeed, Morrison, and I’m the only one who has seen her.”
“All I did was sit outside and keep watch,” Christopher added, self-righteously.
His mother rolled her eyes.“So you let your cousin and future sister-in-law go inside by themselves?”
Christopher threw his hands up.“Damned if I do and damned if I don’t, is that it?”
“Clearly,” I told him.“Don’t worry about it, Christopher.It was a nice, clean crime scene.Nothing much to see at all.We were careful not to touch much.Her address book was in her handbag and her passbook in her unmentionables drawer, under a lot of boring cotton and wool.”
“Dear me, Darling,” drawled Crispin’s voice from behind me.I had no idea where he had come from, all of a sudden.He hadn’t been here—nor Laetitia—when Constance and I entered the room.Outside for a cigarette or a romantic stroll through the gardens, perhaps.He had a whiff of the outdoors about him, a chill, crisp, autumnal sort of scent, mixed with the clean odor of rain.“How terribly ill-mannered of you, pawing through other people’s unmentionables.”
“You would know all about pawing, St George,” I retorted with a look up at him.“Where have you been, pray tell?The center of the garden maze?”
Constance, who had once walked in on Crispin and another young lady sharing the wrought iron bench in the middle of the maze, made a choking sound and buried her face in her hands.Her cheeks were bright red.
Crispin looked at her, and must have been reminded of the occasion, too, because he flushed.He returned his attention to me.“One of these days, Darling?—”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, St George.As I was saying?—”
I turned back to Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, who had been watching the exchange with something halfway between horror and amusement, “I did paw through her unmentionables.Not while she was wearing them, obviously.I’m not some people.They were decently stored in a drawer in her wardrobe.But that’s not what we were discussing.She had Doctor Meadows’s name in her address book, and I thought I might pay him a visit tomorrow, before we leave Sutherland Hall.”
“Didn’t you speak to Doctor Meadows in April?”Aunt Roz wanted to know.“Wasn’t that where you were headed when…”
“When Aunt Charlotte decided to practice her target shooting from Christopher’s bedroom window, yes.”I nodded, as I tried to ignore the reaction from behind me.Or the lack of reaction, perhaps.And not from Crispin; the sense of stillness, of interrupted breathing, came from the card table.Uncle Harold, most likely.It was no surprise that he didn’t like to be reminded of his late wife’s attempted murder of me, especially in front of the Marsdens.
“That was not a question about Morrison,” I added.“That was about Grimsby and whatever secret he had dug up that got him and Duke Henry killed.”
The silence from the card table became more charged.
“But that’s neither here nor there at the moment,” I concluded.“This would just be a question about Morrison.And it’s not as if any of us has to worry about being accused of her murder.We were all here in Wiltshire when she died.Hours away from the Cotswolds.”
There was a breath during which no one said anything, and then?—
“Of course we were, Darling,” Crispin said.“Speaking for myself, I was in Kit’s room until after midnight.I wouldn’t have had the time to motor to the Cotswolds and back before breakfast the next morning.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I told him, “considering the speed with which you usually move.Although for the record, I wasn’t accusing you.”
He rolled his eyes.“There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.Thanks ever so, Darling.”
Laetitia cleared her throat, and he added, with a grimace, “Philippa.”
Uncle Harold cleared his throat.“Of course you didn’t do, St George.Nor did anyone else here.It’s as Miss Darling said: none of us had the opportunity to motor up to the Cotswolds and murder that poor woman.Not without being missed.Ergo, none of us did it.”
“Precisely,” I said.I don’t like to agree with Uncle Harold—I don’t like Uncle Harold, period—but needs must.“I’m simply curious as to who did do, so I think I’ll take a walk to the village after breakfast tomorrow, and have a conversation with Doctor Meadows.Just because he didn’t have any answers about what went on last time, doesn’t mean he might not know something about what’s happened now.”
“I’ll come with you,” Christopher said.
“Thank you, Christopher.”I included the rest of the family in the next statement.“And nobody better shoot at us from the house when we come out from behind the trees this time.”
Laetitia sniffed.“As if anyone here would do such a thing.”
“It’s happened to me twice,” I pointed out.“The second time was at Marsden Manor in September.”
“My stars!”Countess Euphemia slapped a hand to her bosom, while her husband looked startled.
“It was the morning of the shoot,” Francis said.He had been in just as much danger of being hit by the wayward bullet as I had been.It had passed within a foot of us both.“We were outside on the lawn, the three of us.”He indicated me and Christopher.“The bullet came from the woods, passed between us, and embedded itself in the wall.”
