Page 64 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
“Excuse me.” I got to my feet, abruptly. Crispin blinked. He had been watching me, perhaps waiting for me to answer the question he hadn’t quite managed to get out earlier, the one that had started me down this path of conjecture. I avoided his eyes and turned to my right instead. “Christopher?”
“Of course.” He rose politely.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” Aunt Roz said.
“Of course not. When do we ever?” He grinned as Aunt Roz rolled her eyes, and put his hand on my back to guide me out of the room. “Come on, Pippa. Let’s go.”
We ducked out of the sitting room and towards the front door. Behind us, I could hear Lady Euphemia clear her throat. “Roslyn, my dear…”
“What are we doing?” Christopher wanted to know, heading for the front door.
I glanced up at him. “Checking the motorcars. It occurred to me?—”
He changed direction. “We’ll need gloves, then. Don’t want to leave any evidence of our own.”
No, indeed. I let him pull the door open to the back of the house, and then followed him into the boot room, where he rummaged around until he found a pair of driving gloves for himself and a pair of Aunt Roz’s gardening gloves for me. They looked ridiculous with my outfit, all ratty and stained with dirt, but at least they would keep me from getting my fingerprints all over everything.
“We’d better hurry,” Christopher added, pulling the door to the driveway open. “We don’t know how long we have until Sammy comes back with reinforcements. Would you tell me why you decided this was necessary?”
“It was what St George said about the croquet mallet, and from there a detour into how Abigail might have arrived at Beckwith Place last night.”
“She walked, don’t you think?”
He nodded me towards the row of cars parked along the driveway.
“It occurred to me,” I said as we took off in that direction, “that she might not have. That perhaps Geoffrey went to the village—St George said he wasn’t in the drawing room last night—and that he might have come upon her walking back here, and offered her a lift. And then one thing led to another.”
“Say no more.” Christopher headed for the sleek green Daimler and the burgundy Crossley. “He would have taken one of these two, don’t you think?”
Rather than the Duke’s Crossley—which wasn’t here, I noted—or Crispin’s Hispano-Suiza? Almost certainly.
“What are we looking for?” Christopher pulled open the Daimler’s door and bent over the leather upholstery.
“I have no idea,” I said. “Hair? Makeup smears? She left her tote in the garden before she fainted, so I don’t suppose it’s likely we’ll find a reticule or anything of that nature. And I don’t think she was wearing jewelry, was she? A dropped earring would come in uncommonly handy…”
Christopher sniggered. “Chance would be a fine thing. But I don’t think we’ll be that lucky, Pippa. And she was wearing both her shoes, too.”
I nodded. “I doubt we’ll find anything at all, to be honest. But I couldn’t sit there any longer. The desperation was choking me. Constance is scared out of her mind about what might happen to Francis, and the way Laetitia was petting St George…”
“Was she petting him?”
“Playing with his hair,” I said. “Stroking the back of his neck. Dipping her fingertips under his collar. It was indecent.”
He looked at me. “You know, Pippa…”
“Fine,” I said. “It wasn’t indecent. We’ve both seen her do worse. But it was inappropriate for eight o’clock in the morning in your mother’s and father’s sitting room. Not to mention the other circumstances that make it in poor taste.”
The dead body on the lawn, the police investigation, and the now-motherless baby that might be Crispin’s.
Christopher shot me a look. “Are you quite certain you aren’t just jealous, Pippa?”
I gave him one back, a longer and more narrow one. “Why on earth would I be jealous, Christopher? I can barely stand St George. I have no desire to touch him. And I certainly wouldn’t want to run my fingers through his hair. It’s full of brilliantine, isn’t it?”
Really, it would take real indulgence for any woman to run her fingers through any man’s hair these days, sticky as it’s likely to be.
Christopher laughed. “You have to admit that for someone who swears up and down that she dislikes the man, you’re rather opinionated when it comes to other women liking him.”
“I don’t mind women liking him,” I said. Or sniffed, rather. “But her parents were sitting right there, Christopher. So was his father. So were the rest of us. Why on earth can’t she keep her hands to herself when we’re all forced to watch?”
