Page 62 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
Christopher hesitated, and I added, “It’s only going to take a minute. I just want to see whether Sammy’s back on the lawn and if he has rung for reinforcements. He can’t investigate everything by himself, I imagine. I mean, we’re in here, and she’s out there, and there are rather a lot of us…”
“If he’s rung anyone, he hasn’t done it from in here,” Christopher said, but he followed Francis down the hallway. “Don’t dilly-dally, Pippa,” he told me over his shoulder.
“Of course not.” I didn’t wait for him to disappear through the door above the cellar steps, just turned in the other direction and headed for the terrasse. A few seconds later, I had closed the back door behind me and was on my way across the flagstones, as quietly as I could manage.
There turned out to be no need to sneak around, however. The lawn was perfectly empty except for the dead body still sprawled there, with the croquet mallet nearby. Sammy was nowhere to be seen. He was either still speaking to Wilkins by the boot room door, or he had gotten back on his bicycle and gone down to the village to request help from the rest of the constabulary.
If he had done anything at all to protect the crime scene, it wasn’t immediately evident to me. I could have walked up to the body and touched it, had I wanted to.
Of course I didn’t. Want to, or do it. I had already seen poor Abigail up close; I had no need to examine her again. I certainly didn’t want to touch her. Watching Crispin do so had been more than enough for me.
I did think Sammy ought to have covered her with something, though, now that he had seen her. It seemed polite, as well as a prudent way to protect the crime scene as much as possible.
Although I didn’t know what there was to protect, to be honest. The croquet lawn was… well, it was a lawn. It wasn’t likely that the killer would have left footprints. It hadn’t rained recently, and the grass was thick.
I put my back to the balustrade—and the body—and surveyed the terrasse. This was where we’d sat yesterday, when Abigail had staggered out from the bushes and collapsed on the lawn. Crispin on the far right now, with Uncle Harold, Laetitia, and her mother. Christopher and I, Constance and Francis, at the table in the middle, and Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert with the Earl and Lord Geoffrey on my left.
But what good did it do to think about any of that? Nothing had happened then. She had collapsed, and some of us had run for her while others had stayed in their seats. I supposed those reactions, or lack thereof, might have said something about our individual attitudes towards those less fortunate than us, but I couldn’t see what it might have to do with the murder, since at that point, more than half the assembly hadn’t even known who Abigail Dole was.
Something moved, just at the upper edge of my vision, and I glanced up, at the soft, faded brick of the old Georgian house. It was glowing a lovely pinkish peach, a result of the sun just creeping above the trees to the east.
Up on the third floor, in the room where I had spent the night, a shadow stepped back from the six-over-six paned windows. I squinted against the reflection of the sun to see if I could make out who it was, but by now, the window was empty.
Aunt Roz, maybe, tidying up. Or Christopher, whose room it was supposed to have been originally. His weekender bag with his spare clothes had still been on his unused bed when I ran out of there this morning.
Or someone else, wanting a private look at the crime scene, from a vantage point where they weren’t likely to be seen?
I contemplated the empty window, blank now but for the mullions crisscrossing it, for another moment before I headed back across the flagstones to the terrasse door.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Everyone wasin the sitting room by the time I made my way there. Laetitia looked quite comfortable cozied up to Crispin, not quite on his lap, but as close as she could get without being there. Constance was perched next to Francis on one of the Chesterfields, hand between both of his. Christopher was next to them. Aunt Roz stood by the window, swaying back and forth, still holding the baby, while Uncle Herbert watched from one of the armchairs. His expression was half concerned, half indulgent. If little Bess turned out to be their grandchild—or even if she didn’t—it looked as if they were quite ready to shower her with attention. Uncle Herbert was probably concerned that Aunt Roz was getting attached, actually.
Uncle Harold kept a keen eye on Laetitia and Crispin, and so did Lady Euphemia. Although when I walked in, she gave me a cold up-and-down look before turning her attention back onto her daughter. It wasn’t quite blatant enough for me to justify being rude, so I ignored it and headed for Christopher. “Budge up, please.”
He scooted closer to Constance, and I fitted myself on the edge of the sofa next to him. “Quiet crowd.”
Quiet enough that I couldn’t ask him who might have just arrived in the sitting room from upstairs, not without having everyone present hear me.
He nodded. “Anything going on outside?”
“Not that I could see. The body hasn’t been covered, and Sammy was nowhere to be seen. When I checked outside the boot room, both he and Wilkins were gone from the driveway. I think perhaps he headed back to the village for reinforcements.”
Or perhaps Sammy had been the one upstairs in my room. Looking for… evidence?
“He left,” Christopher reiterated, “and left the body on the lawn?”
I shrugged. “Hard to say what else he could have done with it, to be fair. He can’t move it until it’s been photographed and examinedin situ, and for that, I assume he needs the medical examiner. Would that be Doctor White, do you suppose?”
“I think so, Pippa,” Aunt Roz said from over by the window. “Did Wilkins drive Constable Entwistle to the village?”
He might have done, now that she asked. I had assumed Wilkins had merely vanished into the carriage house to await His Grace’s pleasure, but it was possible that Sammy had commandeered the Crossley and Wilkins’s services instead of setting off on his bicycle. It would make sense, if he planned to bring people back with him.
I wouldn’t mind at all if they came back with the doctor, actually. I had a few questions for Gerald White. Including why no one had noticed Abigail walk off in the middle of the night, and also whether she had woken up at any point yesterday, and had perhaps said something to someone about what she was—or had been—doing here at Beckwith Place. Something more specific than what we already knew, or thought we did.
“This is intolerable,” Lady Euphemia said, with another look at me, as if it were my fault. “Isn’t there something that can be done?”
“Done about what?” was the obvious answer, and I thought about giving it. Aunt Roz got in first.
