Page 61 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
“Not quite the same reason, Darling. I’m not engaged to Laetitia, am I?”
“You might as well be,” I told him, “considering how possessive she is of you. And she has no alibi, either. She slept in a room by herself. One with a view of the lawn. She might have seen Abigail arrive, and decided to go downstairs and deal with her. I saw her expression yesterday, when she saw the baby. Do you really suppose she wouldn’t kill to keep you?”
“Now, listen here, Miss Darling…” Uncle Harold began, and Crispin shot him a look. So did Aunt Roz, who must have assumed that I was likely to start accusing both Uncle Harold and the other Marsdens next.
“Well,” she said brightly, “this has all been quite illuminating, hasn’t it? But I think perhaps it’s time you and I join the others now, Harold, and let the children be.”
I huffed, but quietly, so she wouldn’t notice. “Shall I clean up the kitchen, Aunt Roz?”
“Yes, thank you, Pippa.” She balanced little Bess against her shoulder and began patting her back. “Rinse the bottle so it’s clean for next time, too, if you please. Hopefully Cook will get here soon, so we can get some food on the table.”
“I can begin on breakfast,” I offered, “if you’d like.”
“No, no, Pippa.” She looked faintly alarmed. “Leave it for Cook, dear.”
She swept Uncle Harold out the door ahead of herself, and herded him down the hallway towards the front of the house.
Crispin sniggered as I began to gather the teacups. “Was that a reaction to your cooking, Darling? Afraid you’ll poison us all if you attempt to make breakfast?”
“At least I’m able to feed myself,” I shot back. “Christopher and I don’t have live-in help, you know.”
Unlike him, who had the entire staff at the Hall, or at Sutherland House, available to him when he was in residence.
“You live in a service flat, don’t you?”
“We have a kitchen,” I said. “For God’s sake, St George, we’re not incompetent.”
He smirked. “Truly, Darling? You know how to cook?”
“I can cook enough that Christopher and I won’t starve. I could manage breakfast right now, although I’m sure Lady Euphemia wouldn’t be likely to appreciate my efforts. Nor would your father, I’m sure.” Or Lady Laetitia, for that matter. “Mostly, we end up boiling eggs and eating sandwiches and the like. But whoever I marry, assuming he’ll be someone without a staff, won’t starve. I’m sure that’s more than you can say, St George.”
“Luckily, I’ll never have to worry about it,” Crispin said languidly. “Are we done here, then?”
He glanced at the door.
“If you can’t wait to see Laetitia,” I told him, turning toward the sink with the cups and saucers, “I certainly won’t keep you. Goodbye, St George.”
I waved him off. He scowled, but went. Francis, who had been watching the two of us like a spectator at a tennis match, chuckled. “You know, Pippa?—”
“Yes, Francis. But all the same, we do have to figure this out, you know. Sammy—Constable Entwistle—is going to want to pin this murder on somebody. If we can’t figure out who actually did it, I’m afraid he’ll choose you.”
“Of course he’ll choose me,” Francis said, and got to his feet. “I’m the most likely suspect, and not just because he has a bone to pick with me. She’d already visited Sutherland House and your flat in London, hadn’t she? So she looked at both Crispin and Kit and decided they weren’t who she was looking for. That leaves me. With a history of drinking too much, and doping myself to the gills, and doing stupid things I can’t remember the next day—all of which Sammy Entwistle is well aware of. And with a brand new fiancée I’m presumably willing to do anything to keep. Even murder.”
When he put it like that, it sounded unpleasantly possible. “We know you’d never?—”
“Of courseyouknow that, Pippa. And you saw me last night, and you know I wouldn’t have woken up for anything but a crack of lightning that hit the roof. But Sammy’s going to say that I was pretending, and that I fooled you, and Constance, and that I was able to sneak out when she didn’t notice and kill that poor girl, and there’s going to be no way of proving that I didn’t!”
His voice had risen until he came to the last word, and after he had finished speaking, the silence rang. I swallowed a nervous hiccough.
“We won’t let that happen,” Christopher said. “I promise, Francis. Tom’s on his way. He knows you wouldn’t. And I don’t care what we have to do. I’ll kill Entwistle myself if I have to, before I let him arrest you for this murder.”
Francis choked back a laugh, although it was a wet one. “Don’t even say that, Kit.” He put his hand on Christopher’s shoulder for a moment. “You have no idea what that’s like, and I don’t want you to ever know. But I didn’t do it, and hopefully Tom will be able to prove it. If it’s up to him, that is.”
“If it isn’t,” I said, as I put my own arm around Francis’s waist, “I’ll prove it myself. We will not allow anyone to arrest you for a crime you didn’t commit.”
“Thank you, Pippa.” He leaned into me for a second before he straightened again. And cleared his throat before telling us, “We should go find the others. Cook will be here soon, and won’t want us in her domain, and I should find Constance.”
“I’ll just peek out the back,” I said as we entered the hallway and the others turned towards the front of the house. “Just to see if anything more has happened.”
