Page 54 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
She headed for the back of the house, baby in her arms. I tucked Christopher’s handkerchief into my pocket—he wasn’t likely to want it back after what had happened to it—and followed.
“Aunt Roz? What’s going to happen to Bess now?”
Aunt Roz passed into the kitchen and sighed. “I don’t know, Pippa. Tell me again what you know about her mother?”
“Me?” I began to busy myself with pouring the now gently steaming milk into a clear glass bottle with the name S. Maw & Sons stamped on it. One of Christopher’s baby bottles that had languished at the back of a cabinet for twenty-two years, I assumed. “I know very little. Just her name and the baby’s name, plus the items on the list we found. That’s all.”
Aunt Roz took the bottle and squirted a drop of milk on the inside of her wrist. The temperature must have been acceptable, because she handed it to Bess with a distracted, “Yes, yes. There you are.”
The baby grabbed the bottle in both hands and latched on, greedily.
“Christopher wasn’t at home when she showed up at the Essex House,” I said, watching as little Bess swallowed rhythmically, “so I went downstairs to greet her. It was Wednesday of last week, tea time. I tried to get her to come up to the flat with me but she wouldn’t. If she had, I might have been able to find out more.”
Aunt Roz nodded, watching the baby suck on the bottle. “And before that?”
“Rogers said that when she came to Sutherland House this spring, she asked for the old Duke’s grandson. They showed her Crispin, and he denounced her?—”
“There’s no need to put it that way, Darling,” the scion of the Sutherlands drawled from where he was lounging in the doorway with a shoulder against the jamb. “We’re not Victorians, you know.”
Aunt Roz fixed him with a stare. “Anything to add, Crispin? Since you’re the only other one of us who has actually met her?”
He shook his head. “No, Aunt Roslyn. The occasion wasn’t auspicious. It had been a long night, and I wasn’t myself.”
“Hung over?” I inquired tartly. “Asleep? Still foxed?”
He eyed me. “All three, Darling. And also not alone.”
Oh, ouch. “That must have gone over well. Dragged away from one woman only to be confronted with another and a baby that looks just like you.”
“She looked less like me back then,” Crispin said, with a glance at little Bess. “Just any old baby with blond hair, really. She looks more like a Sutherland now. Although—” he smirked, “I don’t have to worry about Violet Cummings trying to drag me to the altar anymore.”
“Oh dear,” Aunt Roz said, although her eyes were dancing. “You got nothing out of her, I assume?”
He shook his head. “It’s like Darling said. She took one look at me and ran. I was in no condition to follow. And it wasn’t as if I could ask Rogers to tackle her in the street.”
Aunt Roz nodded. “So we know nothing about her other than her name.”
“We might have Bess’s birth date,” Christopher offered, “if the date on the blanket is correct. We—or someone—could check the London parish register. Not today, of course…”
“And,” I added, “it seems she might have met this man at the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, probably sometime in April of last year. I assume it must have been a one-time thing, or she would have known more about him.”
I glanced at Crispin for his thoughts, since I figured he was the one among all of us with the most experience in such matters.
He made a face, but nodded. “Likely, yes. Some bounder swept her off her feet and then left her to face the consequences on her own afterwards.”
“A good thing you’d never do that,” I said sarcastically, since I had certainly gotten the impression that he was quite experienced at the hit-and-run.
He fixed me with a look. “I wouldn’t, Darling. Not that I haven’t swept my share of young women off their feet, but I’ve made sure there are no consequences. If there had been, I would have dealt with them.”
My eyes narrowed. “Dealt with them, how?”
He rolled his own. “Not by killing the messenger, for God’s sake. I’m not a murderer. And these circumstances…”
He shook his head, eyes on little Bess who was still sucking lustily on the bottle. “Anyone who kills the mother of a baby just because he can’t be bothered to take responsibility for his own actions deserves to hang.”
There was a moment’s silence, and then?—
“It’s likely she’s a Londoner, then,” Aunt Roz said briskly, yanking the conversation back on track with ruthless efficiency. “You didn’t notice an accent, I suppose?”
