Page 97 of Blackmail at Beckwith Place
Of all the people here, I thought she actually might have done. She doesn’t like me much, and I suppose I was partly to blame for that, after the way I had greeted St George when we arrived. And then, of course, there was the fact that I had spent the time since I got here diligently trying to talk him out of marrying Laetitia.
None of that had happened until after we were both here, though, and I didn’t think she’d come here with a plan to kill me. And she would have had to, to have brought the trench club with her. But of everyone, she’d had both motive and opportunity, as well as a reason to try to frame me with the murder weapon. She stayed on the list.
She had not been upstairs at the time when I had seen the shadow against the window in my room, however. Not according to Christopher. And if that had been when the trench club had been hidden under my mattress, then Laetitia hadn’t done it.
Constance had had opportunity to kill Abigail, since Francis had surely been too drunk to notice her moving about last night. She’d been close to the back door, which would have made going outside easy. There had been no one else in the back of the house to see her come and go. And if Abigail had knocked on the back or side door—which she might have done when she arrived in the middle of the night—Constance was the one most likely to have heard her. All the rest of us had been upstairs, with the exception of Francis.
She’d had motive, if she had believed that Abigail might take Francis away from her.
I wasn’t sure she would have had the strength to crack someone’s skull, but given sufficient motivation, it was possible. I also had no idea where she would have got her hands on the trench club, but that was true for all of us.
And she had been upstairs when it had been put in my room. But try as I might, I couldn’t imagine Constance framing me for murder. Why would she? We were friends.
I had had opportunity, of course. I’d slept alone. I’d had no motive—I had felt bad for Abigail, and had wanted to know who her baby’s father was, but I hadn’t felt threatened by her. Her situation certainly hadn’t been worth committing murder over.
Who else?
There was Uncle Harold. He’d slept alone. He’d had motive, if he thought Abigail was after Crispin. He wasn’t above knocking his only son around when he felt like it, so I knew he had at least some capacity for violence. I had no idea where he might have got his hands on a trench club, but he could have found one had he wanted to. You can acquire anything when you have enough money.
Would he have framed me for murder, though?
I wouldn’t like to think so, certainly. I was part of the Sutherland family, practically a daughter to Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert, and if he did that and was discovered to have done it, he would completely destroy his relationship with his brother, his sister-in-law, and both his nephews. His son might not like it much, either, not that Crispin’s opinions seemed to hold a whole lot of weight with His Grace.
And if Uncle Harold had committed murder and was trying to avoid being arrested for it, family relations might take a back seat to the gallows, anyway.
Cook was surely out of the picture. She belonged here at Beckwith Place and would have had no reason to know that Abigail and Bess even existed.
Hughes? She would have heard about Abigail during that weekend at Sutherland Hall, when the rest of us had first heard the story about the girl with the baby who had visited Sutherland House. I couldn’t think of any reason why Hughes would have killed her, though. And anyway, she hadn’t been here last night. Like Cook and Wilkins, she had lodged in the village?—
“Pippa,” Christopher’s voice said from behind me, and I jumped. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed the door opening again.
“Is everything all right? Are you feeling better?” He looked concerned. “You’ve been out here a long time.”
“I’m fine.” I jumped to my feet. “Do you require me?”
“Sammy does. He wants to go over some of your answers again.”
“Where?”
“He has taken over Father’s study,” Christopher said. “Tom’s with him.”
“Perhaps he has realized that he needs help.” I crossed the threshold and waited for him to close the front door behind me. “Or at least that he’d be better off accepting it, when it’s available. Hopefully that means this will get figured out sooner rather than later.”
He nodded, and I added, “Anything else I should know?”
Christopher shook his head and fell in behind me. “I think he suspects you, Pippa.”
“He would.” I pulled the door to the back of the house open and stepped onto the cellar landing. Behind me, Christopher followed.
When both doors were closed, the one in front of me and the one behind Christopher, I added, “He knows I had both motive and opportunity, and the real murder weapon was found in my room. Why wouldn’t he suspect me?”
“Because you didn’t do it?” Christopher suggested.
I smiled. “Of course I didn’t do it. Tom knows that. Between us, we’ll be able to set Sammy straight.”
“See that you do,” Christopher said, leaning a shoulder against the wall. “I’ll tell you straight out, Pippa, I’m worried. I know it isn’t my baby, and I don’t believe it’s Crispin’s or Francis’s, either. But if not ours, then whose?”
I shook my head, since I couldn’t tell him what I knew that he didn’t.
