Page 34 of Mischief at Marsden Manor
“Stray shot,” Francis said blandly, as if the bullet hadn’t come within a few inches of his head. “Someone has bad aim.”
Constance’s eyes widened. But before she could say anything?—
“We’re fine,” I reassured her. “Someone’s gun must have misfired in our direction. It didn’t hit either of us. We just dropped to the grass in case there were more shots.”
Constance bit her lip, but when neither of us made the incident out to be any more than that, she seemed to accept that it wasn’t a big thing that had happened. I fully intended to get to the bottom of it at some point, but right now, we had more important matters to concern ourselves with. “How is she?”
“The same as earlier,” Constance said with a glance at the still figure in the bed. “She hasn’t moved.”
I nodded, as Francis bent over the bed for a closer look. We watched as he peeled one of Cecily’s eyelids back to peer at her pupil, before putting his hand against the pulse in her throat. That done, he straightened, and took hold of the blankets to pull them down.
I made a forward movement, and then checked it. It wasn’t as if Cecily was unclothed under the blankets—I had put her to bed myself and knew she was wearing pyjamas—and after the first moment it didn’t matter anyway. Constance gasped and Christopher winced. Francis cursed.
I stared in appalled silence for a moment before I blurted, “We need a doctor. Or perhaps a midwife would be better.”
“I doubt there’s much a doctor could do,” Francis said, eyeing the considerable amount of blood under Cecily’s pelvis. It had soaked into the bedding and mattress—the latter must be utterlyruined—and the celery satin of the pyjamas looked obscene. “And it’s certainly much too late for a midwife.”
“Dear Lord,” Constance said faintly, hand over her mouth. She was almost as pale as Cecily, and looked as if she were midway between fainting and vomiting.
“Was she—” Christopher cleared his throat. He looked as bad as Constance, and faintly green. “She wasn’t like this when you saw her last night, Pippa, was she?”
“Of course not,” I said automatically. And gave it a moment’s thought before I added, “No, I’m certain she wasn’t. The light was on in the lavatory, so I would have spotted copious amounts of fresh blood. She was fine then.”
Or perhaps not fine—violently ill to her stomach, pale and trembling—but not bleeding. I would never have left her alone if she had been.
“Tell me again what was wrong with her last night?” Francis asked.
I shot a glance at Cecily. “Shouldn’t we ring for a doctor instead of standing here and discussing it?”
“I’ll go,” Constance said and ducked around me and out of the room with the air of someone escaping a torturous situation. That might have been why none of us tried to stop her: she looked so obviously relieved to have a reason to get away. The look Christopher sent her indicated that he would have liked the opportunity to escape, too.
Francis watched until Constance was out of the room and we could hear her brogues hurry towards the end of the hall and the staircase before he turned back to me. “A doctor won’t be able to do anything for her, Pippa. Although I suppose it can’t hurt to have one come by to take a look. The certificate of death will probably require an autopsy before it can be signed, anyway. The doctor will have to order that.”
“You mean?—”
I stopped myself before I could say anything further, and started over once I had reconsidered what I wanted to ask, or more specifically the way I wanted to ask it. More carefully, for one thing. First of all was the implication that he expected her to die, and he said it as if there was no question whatsoever about it coming true and like there was nothing we could do to prevent it. But in addition to that, there was the suggestion that an autopsy would have to be performed. And for that to bede rigueur… “Are you suggesting that someone tried to kill her?”
Francis looked surprised. “I wasn’t. Do you have reason to think someone did?”
I didn’t, of course. Only… “What did you mean, then? Why would there be an autopsy if there wasn’t a question about the cause of death?”
“There can be questions about cause of death without it being murder,” Francis said. “This doesn’t look like a natural death to me. Especially not with what you told me was going on last night. She was sick, you said?”
“Violently. And clammy and pale and unsteady on her feet. She wasn’t bleeding, though. I would have noticed that. But she was sick to her stomach and in pain.”
Although that wasn’t necessarily anything out of the ordinary for someoneenceinte, was it?
“No,” Francis agreed, “although this is more than that, isn’t it?”
He waited a second for the thought to sink in, before he added, “Perhaps she took something she thought would eliminate her problem. Or the problem she did have, I suppose. It won’t be a problem any longer. Nor will anything else.”
“You mean?—”
“Yes,” Francis said. “She fed herself an abortifacient, and in the process, it killed her.”
I looked away from the blood, up to Cecily’s face and to her chest, which was moving almost imperceptibly. “She isn’t dead yet.”
“She will be,” Francis said. “I’ve seen enough death to recognize it.”
