Page 73 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
On the other hand, he might simply have believed that Crispin was responsible for Bess, and so he got rid of Abigail to keep her from entrapping Crispin. I could see someone like Uncle Harold justifying murder in a case like that, especially if the victim was no one of consequence.
And then there was Laetitia. I had believed her capable of strangling Johanna de Vos at the Dower House back in May, and I believed her completely capable of killing Abigail Dole now. She wanted Crispin, and from where I was sitting, she seemed willing to do almost anything to get him.
I glanced over at her, perched on the arm of his chair, angled towards him as if she were a flower and he was the sun. I shivered.
“All right, Pippa?” Christopher whispered. He reached over and took my hand.
I nodded and leaned closer, putting my head on his shoulder. “Ready for this to be over.”
Sammy Entwistle, as if he had heard me, cleared his throat. “Let’s start over from the beginning.”
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Rescue camein the form of Wilkins and the Crossley, and the reinforcements from the village. Sammy dismissed us so he could go and give his minions orders, and I turned to Christopher. “Walk with me.”
He nodded. “Excuse us.”
“Of course, dear.” Aunt Roz waved us off. We ducked out into the foyer and then through the front door and into the fresh air.
“Where do you want to walk to?” Christopher wanted to know when we were outside in the sunshine and warm July breezes. The sun was up now, and it was turning into a nice day. Excepting the dead body on the lawn, of course, and the constables crawling all over everything, and the suspicion that was attached to the family in general.
I shook my head, feeling a combination of hysteria and helplessness creep into my head and my voice. “Nowhere. There’s nowhere to go. We’re stuck here, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Somebody murdered someone on the lawn, and I don’t know who or why!”
“It’s not your job to figure out who or why,” Christopher pointed out as we approached the intersection between front door path and driveway. The Duke’s black Crossley was yet again parked beside the other cars outside the carriage house. “This way.”
He turned me in the other direction, down the driveway towards the lane, away from where there were likely to be other people.
“I know it’s not my job to figure it out,” I told him. “But do you really trust Sammy Entwistle to do it? He’ll arrest Francis just for old times’ sake! He made it clear in there that he suspects him. We always thought he would, but that made it clear.”
“He can’t do that,” Christopher said, although there wasn’t any kind of conviction in his voice. Not much of anything else, either. He must feel as overwhelmed and helpless as I did. “Francis has an alibi. Besides, Tom’s coming.”
“You hope Tom’s coming. But even if he does, as long as Sammy’s in charge, there’s nothing Tom can do.”
“He’s from Scotland Yard!” Christopher said. “Sammy would listen to him, don’t you think?”
“Knowing Sammy—” Not that I did, “I doubt he’d listen to anyone or anything he didn’t personally want to believe. And the thing is, what he believes makes sense, Christopher! Abigail went to Sutherland House and met Crispin. Then she came to the Essex House, and I told her you look just like him. If she knew Crispin wasn’t who she was looking for, at that point she would have known that you weren’t, either.”
Christopher nodded. “I’m not who she was looking for. We both know that.”
Of course. “Then she came here. If the old Duke of Sutherland had three grandsons, and it wasn’t you or Crispin who got her with child, Francis is the only one left.”
“But even if he did,” Christopher protested, “and I’m not saying he did, but if he did… he still couldn’t have killed her. Constance aside, we both saw him when he came home last night, and he wasn’t in any kind of condition to get up and walk out and fetch a croquet mallet and bash anyone over the head.”
No, he hadn’t been. “You don’t suppose he could have been feigning, do you?”
He gave me a look. “Affecting being drunk? To what purpose? He couldn’t have known she’d show up, could he? She was still unconscious when we took her to the village. They didn’t have a chance to set up an assignation for later.”
“Francis was in the village last night, too,” I pointed out, kicking at pebbles in my path. “He might have stopped by the infirmary. And if she was awake, they could have arranged to meet at Beckwith Place later. She’d want her baby back, so it wouldn’t be difficult to convince her to come here.”
Christopher looked reluctant, but he admitted, “I suppose it’s possible. Although even if he did set up a meeting, it makes no sense that he’d go to the carriage house for the mallet. There are weapons closer to hand.”
I supposed that was true. There were fireplace pokers in the library and rolling pins in the kitchen and golf clubs in the boot room. No need for anyone to go to the carriage house for a croquet mallet.
“Besides,” Christopher added, “if it was premeditated, why would he—why would anyone—kill her on our own lawn with our own croquet mallet? None of that makes sense.”
No, it didn’t. Anyone who was thinking straight and had planned the crime would have killed her in the village without bringing her back to where we—wherehe—lived.
The only problem with that, of course, was that Francis hadn’t been thinking straight last night. I doubted he had been able to think at all, as soused as he’d been.
