Page 63 of Mischief at Marsden Manor
He nodded. “The gathering in the dining room was breaking up when I came back into the house with Lord St George. He excused himself to find his fiancée, and I came upstairs to start searching the bedrooms. I decided to start with Miss Fletcher’s chamber.”
“So you were right across the hall when Mr. Rivers was killed,” I said.
I don’t know what I was thinking. The words simply fell out of my mouth. Christopher made a horrified little noise, although Constable Collins shook his head.
“I’m afraid not. It would have been easier had I been. But the door to Miss Fletcher’s room stayed open while I was in there. I would have heard anyone coming up and knocking on Mr. Rivers’s door. I would certainly have heard the impact of someone breaking a vase over his head.”
“Someone must have done it while we were still outside on the lawn, then,” Christopher said. “After Pippa had herconversation with Rivers in the foyer, but before you and Crispin came back inside.”
Collins nodded. “It’ll be a case of interviewing everyone present, and then afterwards comparing the statements to see whether we can determine where everyone was during that time. A whole lot of conversations and a whole lot of information.”
He sighed.
“It sounds boring,” I said sympathetically. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not, Miss Darling. Except…” He glanced from me to Christopher and back, “perhaps the two of you wouldn’t mind standing here in front of Mr. Rivers’s door until I come back? I’ll have to ring up the village again. I’m going to need help with this. I suppose I’ll have to interrupt the post mortem, too, to let doctor know we have another victim.”
“Of course we’ll stay here until you come back. Not to worry.”
Christopher nodded. Collins nodded back, and took himself off down the hallway towards the staircase. I could see him glance into the alcove on his way past. I hadn’t noticed on our own way up—too focused on Cecily’s open door—but I supposed the peacock feathers were now lying across the plinth where the vase had stood.
“How tall would you say someone would have to be,” I asked Christopher as Constable Collins disappeared through the baize door and down the stairs, “to get enough power behind this vase to kill someone with it?”
He looked from me to the remnants of the vase, still scattered in shards across the floor and Rivers’s back, and made a face. “I’m going to shut the door again.”
“I don’t mind if you do,” I told him, since I would prefer not to see the corpse out of the corner of my eye for the entire time we were standing here, too. “Just be certain not to destroy any of Collins’s fingerprints. The fingerprints on the doorknob thatConstable Collins will want, I mean. Not his own. They oughtn’t to be there.”
“I know what you meant, Pippa.” He took his own handkerchief out, draped it over the knob, and pulled the door shut by tugging on the ends of the cloth. “And if the killer was holding the vase—in both hands, one has to assume—and knocked on the door, and Rivers opened it, there wouldn’t be the murderer’s fingerprints on the doorknob anyway. There’d only be Rivers’s, on the inside.”
He pulled the knob until the door slotted neatly into the frame.
“Oh, well done,” I told him. “You didn’t even have to touch it.”
“I have my uses.” He shook the handkerchief out after the door latch had clicked, and stuffed it back into his pocket. “Now, to answer your question. Rivers was about my height, wouldn’t you say? Not overly tall, but not short, either?”
“Shorter than Francis or Wolfgang,” I said, “and for that matter shorter than Geoffrey and the Honorable Reggie.”
Christopher nodded. “Shorter than Bilge Fortescue, too. Taller than all of the girls.”
“Not much shorter than Laetitia, or for that matter Lady Serena. Or the countess, I suppose. Not that I think Lady Euphemia was the one who whacked him.”
“Not even if he killed another guest in her home?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, since the question was fairly ridiculous to begin with. If Lady Euphemia Marsden was going to kill someone, I thought it was more likely to be either myself or Wolfgang. Constance’s Aunt Effie had made her disdain of Germans known in July at Beckwith Place. I was honestly surprised that she had allowed her daughter to invite us both.
“If we’re counting the Marsdens,” Christopher added, “Lord Maurice is too short.”
I nodded. “So is Constance. I could have done it, most likely, depending on how heavy the vase was, although I was with you when it happened.”
He didn’t respond, and I added. “Lady Serena is also tallish. And she’s suffered a miscarriage lately. Did I tell you? It came up over luncheon, while you were outside with Constable Collins.”
“That’s interesting,” Christopher said, “isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with Cecily. But if she blames Dominic Rivers for it? If she took something—something she got from him—and it had an adverse effect? Do you suppose she might blame him enough to kill him?”
That was certainly a possibility, and one I hadn’t considered. “She’d be tall enough,” I said, “although perhaps not strong enough.”
“She rode out yesterday. She wouldn’t have done that if she weren’t recovered.”
