Page 31 of Lies in Little Sutherland
“Everything is fine,” Christopher assured him.“Everyone is alive and well.”
The doctor gave me an up-and-down look.“No bullet wounds this time?”
“None at all,” I said.“No bullet wounds, no scraped knees, nothing like that.No one tried to take us out on our way to the village this time around.”
He nodded.“What can I do for you?”
“We just had a question,” Christopher said, with a glance at me.I indicated that he should continue, so he did.“You’ve been the doctor here for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Since before you and your cousin were born,” Doctor Meadows nodded.“My father was the doctor before me.”
“When Aunt Charlotte was young, she had a maid by the name of Lydia Morrison.Would you happen to remember her?”
“Of course,” Doctor Meadows said readily.“She came here from Somerset with your aunt, and went back there, or perhaps it was somewhere else, a few years later.”
He didn’t look as if the question had opened up any kind of wound, old or new.Nor did his voice sound like it.
“It was London,” I confirmed.“And then from there to Dorset with Lady Peckham.Constance’s mother, you know.”
“Young Francis’s girl.”He nodded.“I’ve seen her come and go a few times, but we haven’t met.”
“Constance is lovely,” I said.“You’ll like her.Although we were talking about Morrison.Who was Constance’s mother’s maid almost as long as Constance has been alive.Until April, when she left the household suddenly.”
“After Lady Peckham died?”
I blinked, and then I realized that of course, Doctor Meadows would have attended Lady P upon her death.She had been here at Sutherland Hall when it happened, for Lady Charlotte’s funeral, and when the younger set—all the Astleys, Constance and Gilbert Peckham, Johanna de Vos and myself—decamped for the Dower House, Lady Peckham had stayed behind to provide Uncle Harold with moral support.
She had ended up dead a day later, but I hadn’t given it much thought at the time, since it had happened in Wiltshire while we’d been in Dorset, and since Johanna de Vos’s murder had taken precedence at that point.But now I realized that yes, of course, the staff at the Hall would have called in Doctor Meadows when Lady P died, and for him, that death would loom larger than Johanna’s.
“Before,” I said.“Otherwise she would have been here with Lady P that week, I assume.She left Lady Peckham’s employ right around the time Lady Charlotte died.And Duke Henry and Grimsby.”
“Her departure was rather abrupt,” Christopher added.“She didn’t even wait for her pay, and she didn’t leave a forwarding address.Constance has been worried.”
“Naturally,” Doctor Meadows agreed.He dropped the used towel on top of a nearby table and began to fasten his cuffs.If he had someone in surgery in the other room, he wasn’t in any hurry to get back to them.Perhaps he had simply been washing up after breakfast.
“We didn’t know what to do about it,” Christopher continued, “but this weekend, the Marsdens are visiting.You know that Crispin is engaged to marry Lady Laetitia Marsden?”
Doctor Meadows nodded and glanced at me.I rolled my eyes.It really must be true what Christopher had said, that absolutely everyone knew how Crispin felt about me.
“Well,” Christopher continued, “Lady Marsden’s maid mentioned that she had seen Morrison on holiday last month, so we motored up to the Cotswolds a few days ago.”
“Word has spread,” Doctor Meadows nodded.
“Has it, really?Well—” I folded my arms across my chest, “your name was in her address book, so we thought perhaps you could shed some light on what happened.”
He stared at me.“Shed some light upon her death, do you mean?Dear me, no.I haven’t seen the woman in more than twenty years.I wouldn’t know anything about it.”
“Why would she have your contact information in her book after all these years?”
“Perhaps the book is twenty years old,” Doctor Meadows said, and of course there was a possibility of that.
“But you did know her when she worked for Lady Charlotte?”
“I know all the locals,” Doctor Meadows said.“Gentry and otherwise.Everyone gets ill, Miss Darling.”
Yes, of course.“Can you remember Morrison needing your services for anything in particular?Illness or injury?Anything else?”
Pregnancy, just as a for-instance.
