Page 56 of Lies in Little Sutherland
He didn’t wait for me to respond, just added, “Whether or not Lady Peckham had her eye on my father when she turned up for the funeral—and I sincerely doubt that she did, Darling, as my mother had only been gone a week and a half at that point—but even so, you do know that my father wouldn’t have killed her, don’t you?Why would he do?All he had to do was say no.”
“Of course I know that.”
I shot a guilty look at Uncle Harold, whose attention must have been caught by the precipitate departure of Constance and Francis.He was watching the door with a wrinkle between his brows.
“Perhaps not the nicest reminder for Constance either, Pippa,” Christopher murmured, “that her brother killed her mother.”
I winced.“Perhaps not.I’ll apologize when I see her next.She knows I’m prone to speaking before I think, so hopefully she’ll forgive me.”
“At any rate,” Crispin said, “my father did not kill Lady Peckham—correct, Gardiner?”
Tom nodded.
“—and thus His Grace would have had no reason to kill Doctor Meadows, either.Besides, if he had done—killed Lady P, I mean—and the doctor knew about it, why wait six months to get rid of him?”
“He could pin it on me if he waited until now?”I suggested.“Two birds with one stone and all that.”
“Safer to arrange it as an accident when no one else was around,” Crispin opined.“Surely you’re not actually accusing your host of murder, Darling?”
“Of course not.As I said, I get going, and…”
He nodded.“Well, my job here is done.”
He pushed his chair back.“Let me walk you to my father’s table, Gardiner, so I can get an up-close look at his face, and that of my future mother-in-law, when you tell them that they’re suspects in a murder.”
Tom opened his mouth, most likely to say that they were not, neither of them, suspects in Doctor Meadows’s murder, but Crispin waved him down.“Don’t ruin it, Detective Sergeant.Just let me enjoy the moment.”
“Of course, Lord St George.”Tom got to his feet too.Crispin waited gallantly while Tom gathered up the writing paper and pen, and then they headed across the floor towards the head table.“I’ll come and find you later, Kit,” Tom told him over his shoulder, which sounded quite a lot like a dismissal to me.
Christopher nodded, and then he and I watched them walk away, at least until I noticed Laetitia glaring at me like she would quite like to make me the next murder victim, and at that point I came back to myself and turned to Christopher.
“Would you like to see the expression on His Grace’s face, too, or shall we get out of here?”
“I wouldn’t turn it down,” Christopher said, and nudged his chair backwards, “but I think we ought rather to find Francis and Constance so you can apologize.She’s your best friend?—”
“You’re my best friend.”
Although admittedly Constance and I had become closer in the past few months than we’d ever been in our Godolphin days.I suppose she was my best friend of the female persuasion, unless that was Aunt Roz.Then again, Roz was my aunt, and perhaps that doesn’t count.And Christopher would certainly never provide me with a fiancée or wife who would take that place, so perhaps he was right, and Constance truly was my best girlfriend.
Either way, I owed her an apology.“Lay on, McDuff.”
He glanced down at me.“Shouldn’t you be telling her that?”
“I doubt she’ll want to duel me, Christopher.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Christopher said as he held the door open for me with a polite bow, and let me precede him into the hallway.“She’s nowhere near as meek and mealy-mouthed as you led me to believe she was back in May.”
No, she wasn’t.“I think she’s gained some confidence as she has grown up,” I confessed.“She was very quiet as a girl.”
“She’s still quiet.Just not the pushover you said she was.”He looked around the foyer and raised his voice.“Tidwell?”
“Master Christopher?”
“Did you happen to notice which way Francis and Constance went?Upstairs?Outside?Somewhere else?”
“I did not,” Tidwell said.And added, “No one has come through the foyer in the last few minutes.”
“Thank you, Tidwell.”Christopher turned me around and nudged me back down the hallway.“The conservatory, do you suppose?Or the library?They wouldn’t invade Uncle Harold’s study or the below-stairs, I assume, and if they didn’t go through the foyer…”
