Page 44 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
I shook my head, and continued to shake it. “She’s there again. Now.”
They exchanged a look, and then Crispin threw the blankets off to stride to the window. I kept my eyes on Christopher. “We have to go down. We have to see if…”
I couldn’t finish, and Christopher looked at me with concern for a second before he turned to his cousin. “Crispin?”
The latter turned from the window, his face pale. “She’s there.”
Christopher breathed a bad word and pushed the blankets off himself. “We’d better go, then. But let’s do try to be quiet, so we don’t wake the whole household. At least until we get past the first floor.”
He stuffed his feet into slippers and waited as Crispin, who had taken off his pyjama top to sleep, pulled it back over his head. “Something for your feet, Pippa?”
“I suppose I’d better. Just a moment.” I scurried back across the landing, picked up my brogues, and carried them in my hand as we slipped down the two sets of stairs and through the back of the house onto the terrasse. There, I took a second to shove my bare feet into the shoes before I followed the boys across the flagstones and down the lawn.
By the time I caught up, they were kneeling, one on each side of her, with their knees in the dewy grass. Christopher was pale. Crispin was paler. He had his hand on Abigail’s throat, and must be unable to feel a pulse, because the hand trembled.
“Looks like someone whacked her on the back of the head,” Christopher said. His voice shook, too.
“With that?” I eyed the croquet mallet lying a few feet away.
Christopher glanced at it. So did Crispin. “I would assume so. Don’t touch it.”
I hadn’t planned to. I’m not stupid. I did take a few steps towards it and bent down for a closer look, though. “There’s blood and maybe hair on it.”
My stomach rolled, and I backed away and closed my eyes and focused on pushing air into and out of my lungs.
“All right, Darling?” Crispin asked. His voice came from quite far away, down a long, echoing tunnel.
I nodded and continued to breathe. “Fine. Or I will be fine. Someone should phone the constables.”
“I’m phoning Tom,” Christopher said. I opened my eyes in time to see him push to his feet. “They’ll have to call in Scotland Yard anyway. It’s us. And she was from London. It makes sense.”
“Whatever you say,” Crispin told him. “I’ll stay with her, shall I, until we know what to do?”
“If you don’t mind.” He turned to me. “Pippa?—”
“I’ll stay with Crispin,” I said.
Both of them eyed me as if I had said something extraordinary.
“What?” I wanted to know. “Someone has to stay with you to make sure you don’t tidy away any of the evidence.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of course, Darling. You know, if I had evidence to tidy away, I would have done it last night.”
“It was dark,” I said. “You may not have seen clearly.”
It was Christopher’s turn to roll his eyes. “Be nice, Pippa. Don’t kill each other while I’m gone.”
“No promises,” Crispin told him. “Hurry, won’t you?”
Christopher did just that, headed for the terrasse at a jog. Crispin turned to me, “You know, Darling, your suspicions of me are getting ridiculous. First you thought I shot Grimsby, then you thought I strangled Johanna. You probably played with the idea that I may have killed Gladys, too?—”
“Actually, I didn’t.” I sank to the ground on the other side of the body, far enough away that I didn’t have to look at her, and folded my legs. “I made a good case for why you may have wanted your grandfather and Grimsby out of the way. It made sense. But I never believed that you’d strangled Johanna, and not just because you hadn’t had the time to do it. If you haven’t strangled me in all the years we’ve known each other, you’re not going to strangle anyone else. And the idea that you might have done something to Gladys never even crossed my mind. When we tracked you down at Sutherland Hall that evening, it wasn’t because we thought you’d hurt her. It was because we were worried about you.”
He blinked.
“And I don’t suspect you of this—” My eyes flicked down to the body and away again, quickly, “either. Not more than I suspect anyone else. You’ve always seemed sincere when I’ve asked you about it. And if Bess isn’t yours, then you’d have no reason to murder Abigail.”
He looked caught somewhere between gratified and appalled. “Then why are you making remarks about tidying away evidence?”
