Page 40 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
“I just wanted to get away from the table,” I said. “As long as we’re not there, I don’t care where we are.”
He nodded. “It’s a nice evening. Terrasse?”
The terrasse seemed like as good a place as any, so we headed that way and ranged ourselves along the balustrade. Crispin lighted Laetitia’s cigarette and then his own. And then turned to me. “Darling?”
“Please,” I said.
It was a lovely night. One of those clear, starry ones you sometimes get in summer when the temperature is perfect, there’s no moisture in the air, and the smell of the flowers in the garden pervade everything. It would have been romantic had it not been for Geoffrey Marsden, who insisted on standing too close to me, and his sister, who carried on a heavy-handed flirtation with St George to the point that all I wanted to do was tell her to get a room. We all understood that she considered him her personal property. She had made that part very clear. Neither Constance nor I was a threat to her ownership. There was no need to stake her claim quite so vociferously. Frankly, it was making her look a bit desperate.
I crushed out my cigarette on the balustrade and prepared to get up and go inside, since I’d had all I could take of both Marsden siblings. But before I could get the words out, Constance’s head rose. “Someone’s coming.”
We all quieted, Lady Laetitia a few seconds after the rest. “—so happy…”
I sharpened my ears, and after a moment I could hear what Constance’s sharper ears had picked up on. Shuffling footsteps, or at least the passage of something or someone up the driveway and into the bushes at the corner of the house.
A muffled curse.
“Francis!” Constance jumped up from the parapet and ran for the stairs.
Down at the edge of the croquet lawn, in the shade of the house and the bushes, a many-legged creature appeared. It took a second for it to resolve itself into two figures, closely entwined, matched in height and breadth of shoulder. It wasn’t until they came a bit closer that we could make out Francis on the left and Wilkins on the right. The twin rows of shiny buttons on the latter’s uniform was a dead giveaway once the light hit them.
Constance hurried over and tucked herself under Francis’s other arm. He beamed down on her with the easy affection of the extremely drunk. “Hullo, Connie!”
“Hello, Francis.” She wrapped an arm around his waist and let out a soft grunt when he transferred his weight from Wilkins to her. Christopher headed down the stairs to help them.
“What happened?” he asked as he traded places with the chauffeur on Francis’s other side.
Wilkins retired a few steps to the side and rotated his shoulder and then his neck. Francis was no lightweight. Then again, nor was Wilkins. “His Lordship having indicated that he wouldn’t need my services for the rest of the evening,” he said, “I retired to the village pub, where I’ve taken a room. When Mr. Astley expressed a desire to leave, I offered to drive him up the hill.”
Translation: Francis had been drunk enough that Wilkins was worried he might end up face down in a ditch on his way home, and had thought to spare him that.
“Thank you, Wilkins,” I said. “We’ll take it from here.”
“Yes, Miss Darling.” He turned and headed towards the driveway.
“Wilkins?” I called after him.
He turned around. “Yes, Miss Darling?”
“Any news on the girl?”
“No, Miss Darling.”
“No talk in the pub? Doctor White didn’t come in for a nightcap and let anything slip?”
He shook his head. “No, Miss Darling.”
“All right,” I said. “Thank you, Wilkins. Sleep well.”
“Yes, Miss Darling.”
He disappeared into the bushes. After a moment, we could hear his footsteps on the driveway and then, eventually, there was the sound of the Crossley starting. By then, I had turned my attention to the threesome making their slow way up the stairs and across the terrasse. “There’s simply no way we’ll be able to get him up three flights of stairs to the attic.”
Christopher shook his head. He was out of breath, but not as severely as Constance. Francis must be leaning quite a lot of his weight on them both. “I say we put him in the library,” he told me. “It’s the closest, and no one’s likely to enter at this time of night.”
“Fine by me.” I moved to get the door, but Crispin got there ahead of me.
“He’s all right, isn’t he?”
