Page 52 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
“Of course,” I said and pushed off from the wall. “I’ll go downstairs and see how far Crispin has gotten with his notifications. He might need help.”
“You just want to stop him from walking into Lady Laetitia’s room,” Christopher said.
I sniffed. “And what if I do? His father and her mother are just looking for an excuse to tie him into an engagement. He’d play right into their hands by being caught in there with her in her negligee. And you know he’s not going to be able to resist if she reaches for him and coos his name in that voice she uses when she wants to wheedle something.”
Francis sniggered. “Go ahead and try to prevent him from ruining himself if you want, Pipsqueak. But I fear you’ll be fighting a losing battle.”
I feared he was right. But all the same, I intended to try. “I’ll see you downstairs,” I said, and headed for the stairs. Christopher stayed behind to talk to Francis—or perhaps it just took him longer to get ready than me; men have to wear so many layers.
Downstairs on the landing, I tripped right into Crispin coming out of his father’s—aka Francis’s regular—room at the front of the house. He shut the door behind him and stopped for a second to let out a breath and pinch the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache.
“Everything all right?” I ventured.
He jumped, as if he truly hadn’t noticed me coming. “Oh! Darling. Yes, fine. Talking to my father is always a bit of a strain.”
He kept his voice low, presumably so that Uncle Harold wouldn’t hear him. Beckwith Place is built quite solidly, if not as solidly as Sutherland Hall, so I didn’t think there was much danger of that. I lowered my own in deference anyway. “Surely he didn’t take the opportunity to push his marriage agenda while you were telling him about Abigail Dole’s death?”
“Oh, didn’t he?” He shook his head. “Never mind. He knows what happened; that’s the important part.”
“Come along downstairs, then.” I tucked my hand through his arm. “Let’s see what Constable Entwistle’s up to.”
For a moment he stiffened, and threw a glance at the door to Uncle Harold’s room, but then he let me pull him towards the stairs. Above my head, I could hear Christopher’s—or perhaps Francis’s—footsteps enter the staircase and start down. Elsewhere on the first floor, there was the murmur of voices. Perhaps Aunt Roz talking to the baby or Uncle Herbert updating the Marsdens or Constance and Laetitia conversing behind the closed door of their room.
We landed in the foyer, and I pulled Crispin towards the door to the back of the house.
He resisted. “Where are you taking me?”
“Don’t you want to see what Sammy’s up to?”
“I expect he’s up to his job,” Crispin said, twitching his sleeve out of my grasp. “And no, Darling, since you asked, I feel no need to present myself for his consideration any sooner than I have to. You know he’ll suspect all of us of having killed her.”
“You spent the night with Christopher,” I said. “The two of you can provide one another with an alibi. Besides, if you had started to walk around on the landing in the early hours, I’m sure I would have heard you.”
He quirked a brow. “Did you hear me come up?”
Well, no. I hadn’t, now that he mentioned it. “Were you alone at any point last night?”
He sniggered. “Only the time it took me to climb the stairs from the first story to the attic. After you went upstairs, Kit and I spent some time in the drawing room with the others. He excused himself to go up to bed. I stayed. At the end of it, I walked Laetitia to her door, managed to avoid being pulled inside her room, and came upstairs. By then, Kit was asleep, although I woke him stumbling in.”
Stumbling, was it? “Were you drunk, St George?”
“With my father and Laetitia’s parents watching my every swallow? Please, Darling. I tried to be considerate by not turning on the hall light, but it made it difficult to see.”
Of course it did. “What did you fall over?”
He grimaced. “Kit’s shoes. He’d left them in the thoroughfare. I just barely avoided clipping the side of my head on the bedpost.”
I sniggered. “How very debonair of you, St George.”
He shrugged. “I do better when it’s someone I care to impress in the bed.”
“Of course you do. Must you keep bragging about it?”
He smirked. “I had no idea my escapades bothered you so much.”
“They don’t,” I said. “I just wish you wouldn’t constantly feel the need to remind us all that you go through women the way other men go through socks. It’s not an attractive quality, you know.”
“Sorry, Darling.” There was nothing in his tone or his demeanor to indicate that the apology was sincere.
