Page 59 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
“If you want a splash of something in your tea or coffee,” Aunt Roz told him, “go ahead and fetch it, Francis. I wouldn’t mind a drop of something myself. It isn’t every day we wake up to a dead body on the lawn.”
Francis pushed off from the wall and departed in search of alcohol.
“What’s going to happen now?” Uncle Harold wanted to know.
“I imagine Constable Flatfoot will blunder about the croquet lawn until he has destroyed any evidence that might have been there,” his son answered acerbically, “and eventually the chaps from Scotland Yard will show up and take over.”
Uncle Harold eyed him severely for a moment. “St George…” he began, clearly with the intention of going on.
Crispin shook his head. “I’ve already told you, Father. Not my circus, not my monkey.”
Aunt Roz looked pained. “Crispin, dear…”
Crispin turned to her. “It’s a proverb, Aunt Roslyn. Some sort of Eastern European thing. I learned it from a Russian girl.” He smirked—I rolled my eyes, which made him smirk harder—before he added, “There’s no offense intended against the baby.”
Aunt Roz sighed. “Of course not. That would be silly, wouldn’t it, seeing as she looks exactly like your baby pictures?”
Uncle Harold bristled. “Now listen here, Roslyn?—”
Aunt Roz waved him off. “Never mind, Harold. She looks exactly like Christopher’s baby pictures, too, and quite a lot like Francis’s. I don’t suspect Crispin of being responsible for this any more than I suspect my own children.”
“When you say ‘this’…” I got busy pulling cups and saucers from one of the cupboards and lining them up on the counter next to the stove, “you’re referring to Bess, I assume, and not the murder?”
“Of course, Pippa.” Aunt Roz gave me a look that might almost have been a glare. “No one here would bash that poor girl over the head and leave her on the lawn.”
She glanced around the kitchen once before repeating it. Firmly. “No one.”
The impression I got—that we all got, I’m sure—was that no one had better confess to such a thing, because my aunt would simply not have it.
“Then who did?” I wanted to know as I lifted the kettle off the hob. “Who wants tea?”
Everyone did, it seemed. By the time I had finished fiddling with the leaves and water and had poured the result into cups, Francis was back with the liquor, and we seated ourselves around the table with cups and saucers, tea, milk, sugar, and brandy.
“I don’t know who did, Pippa,” Aunt Roz went back to the question I had asked. “I can’t imagine anyone in the family doing something like that. I know I didn’t raise my boys to kill.”
Of course not. Although at least in Francis’s case, the war had intervened. Francis had surely killed before.
And I think he must have been thinking it, too, because he put his cup into the saucer with a noticeableclick. “I spent the night in the library with Constance. She would have heard it if I left.”
“Of course, Francis, dear,” his mother said.
“Judging from the condition you were in last night,” I added, “you wouldn’t have been able to make your way back to the lawn, let alone see straight enough to hit anyone’s head.”
Francis squinted at me. “Not sure I appreciate that assessment, Pipsqueak.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him, with a pat of his hand. “It couldn’t have been you. You were out cold, too drunk to aim, and spent the night with someone. If anyone’s alibied, it’s you.”
He looked only partly mollified by that. “I’d really rather be thought innocent because you know I would never do something like this.”
“Of course we all know that, Francis,” Christopher said. “But a solid alibi will be a lot more helpful in the long run. Be glad for it.”
Crispin nodded. “Kit and I are covered. I was with the party in the drawing room until we all went to bed, and after that, we slept in the same room.”
“I went up before you,” Christopher reminded him. “There was an hour or so when Pippa was asleep and Constance and Francis were in the library and the rest of you were in the drawing room. I could have killed her then.”
There was a moment’s pause. Then?—
“Don’t be ridiculous, Christopher,” I said, at the same time as Crispin exclaimed, “For God’s sake, Kit, are you trying to get arrested?”
