Page 55 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
I shook my head. “She spoke perfectly properly, the little bit that she said. She was English. She wasn’t posh, but she wasn’t a Cockney, either. Just a perfectly average girl with a perfectly average voice.”
Crispin nodded. “She was pleasant. Polite. Soft-spoken.”
“We’ll have to have the police try to track her down, I suppose. Christopher…”
“I called Tom,” Christopher said. “He was going to talk to his superiors at Scotland Yard, but I don’t think they can simply choose to come and take over the investigation just because we want them to. They have to be invited in, I believe.”
“Like vampires,” Aunt Roz said brightly.
I arched my brows. “Have you been reading Stoker again, Auntie?”
“Never mind, Pippa, dear.” But she grinned. “The engagement party is off, of course. We can’t celebrate such a happy occasion while the police is crawling all over the house and the crime scene on the lawn. It wouldn’t set the right tone at all. Constance and Francis will have to uninvite all their friends, I suppose. It’s a good thing most people are on the telephone these days…”
“I guess we’re stuck with the Marsdens for the duration,” I said, “even if it’s unlikely that any of them had anything to do with this.”
“I’m afraid so, Pippa.” Aunt Roz sighed. “I wish we could cite a murder on the grounds and send them on their way, but I’m afraid the police would look askance at that.”
Yes, I was afraid so, too. “We’ll just have to do the best we can. And speaking of…”
There was the sound of footsteps in the front of the house. We could also hear, or at least I could, the sound of a motorcar outside. “Sounds like someone else is coming, as well.”
“Probably the other police,” Christopher said with a glance over his shoulder. “It’s too soon for Tom, I think.”
“Might be Wilkins,” Crispin added. “Coming to spend the day in the carriage house just in case my father needs the motorcar for something.”
That sounded like a horribly boring way to spend a day. “Perhaps you should go and head him off. Once he sees him, Sammy isn’t likely to let him leave again. But there’s also no chance that Uncle Harold will be allowed to leave Beckwith Place at any point today, so there’s no reason for Wilkins to have to sit here.”
“I can’t imagine that Constable Entwistle will appreciate my telling anyone what to do,” Crispin said, removing himself from the door jamb, “although I suppose someone should give him the news. I doubt Father will think of updating the chauffeur.”
No, I didn’t think he would, either. To Uncle Harold, Wilkins was the equivalent of furniture. He made the motorcar go, but other than that, he wasn’t really a person to the Duke of Sutherland. Which was how Uncle Harold could rationalize having Wilkins sit around all day with nothing to do except wait for a summons that might never come.
But that begged the question of whether Abigail Dole had been a person to Uncle Harold, or if he had simply seen her as an obstacle to what he wanted for Crispin. And if he had, how easy or hard would it have been to swing that croquet mallet at her head?
Not that there was any reason to think he had, of course, any more than anyone else currently in the house. Just because he could have—just because he’d had a motive and the opportunity, and probably the means, too—didn’t mean… well, anything, really. Those things were true for quite a few of us.
“Excuse me,” I told Aunt Roz, and headed for the now-empty doorway. “I’ll be right back.”
She nodded, and turned her attention to her youngest son. “Would you like to hold the baby, Christopher?”
“No,” Christopher said as I left the room, a noticeable shudder in his voice. “Not at all, if you don’t mind, Mother.”
And then I was through the door and into the hallway. Crispin had made his way to the boot room, and as I approached the door, I heard his half-raised voice from inside. “Wilkins! Over here!”
I stepped through the doorway and saw him with his head outside through the crack in the door, and the rest of his body inside the house.
There was the sound of Wilkins’s footsteps on the gravel, and then his voice. “My lord?”
“Wilkins,” Crispin hissed. “There’s been a murder!”
There was a beat of silence. “A murder, my lord?”
“The girl from yesterday,” Crispin said, “the one you drove to the infirmary. She’s dead.”
“Is that so, my lord? How did that happen?”
“We don’t know,” Crispin said, “do we? Miss Darling saw her through the window this morning.” He huffed. “That’s not important.”
“Indeed, my lord?”
