Page 64 of Mischief at Marsden Manor
Likely not. “Her husband would definitely be both tall enough and strong enough. And they were in their room when we walked past, so at least halfway here.”
Christopher nodded. “They definitely stay on the list, then. Who else is there?”
“Violet is about my height,” I said. “Olivia Barnsley is a bit shorter, if not quite as short as Constance. I don’t know whether she’d have been able to raise the vase high enough and bring it down with enough force to kill a man with it.”
“I’m quite certain Constance didn’t do,” Christopher said. “Not only does she not have it in her, but I’m sure she was with Francis.”
“And that gives him an alibi, too, hopefully. Not that he had a motive, either, but an alibi is an alibi.” And always a better thing to have than no motive. Means and opportunity trumps motive each time.
“Not to mention,” Christopher said, with the cynicism of someone who knows how it works, “that it is always possible to come up with a motive if you’re looking for one. Francis is—or was—a dope addict, and Rivers is—or was—a dope dealer. That’s motive enough.”
“For some people. But I’m sure you’re right, and Constance and Francis were together. Just as you and I were together, and Crispin and Laetitia were together.”
“Bilge Fortescue was probably with his wife. I haven’t seen them apart yet.”
I hadn’t either, although— “That doesn’t mean that one of them couldn’t have run up here and killed Rivers while the other stayed in their room downstairs, to make it sound as if they were both there.”
“They’d be in it together, then?”
“They’re married,” I said. “It was both of their baby that they lost.”
“Or so you assume.”
Well, yes. I had done. “I can make a case for Serena giving Bilge an alibi while he kills Rivers, or vice versa. I can’t make a case for one of them doing it with the other unaware. Not if they were both in their room when we came in thirty minutes later. There’s a finite window of opportunity when this could have happened. After Rivers went upstairs, while I was out on the lawn with the three of you, and before Collins went upstairs.”
“Not a long period of time at all,” Christopher said.
I shook my head. “And neither of us knows who was left in the dining room at that point. All we can do is speculate.”
“Collins will figure it out,” Christopher said and put an arm around me. I leaned my head against his shoulder. “A good thing we have an alibi.”
He nodded, chin rubbing against my hair. “A good thing Francis and Constance and Crispin do, too.”
I waited a moment, but when he didn’t say anything else, I said, “I notice you don’t mention Laetitia.”
“I don’t care about Laetitia,” Christopher said. “I might go so far as to say that it wouldn’t bother me if she had killed them both. She would go to prison and Crispin could break the engagement with impunity.”
That was a good point, and I told him so. “If we get lucky, perhaps she won’t have an alibi. She was in the dining room when I left, but that doesn’t mean she stayed there.”
She might have excused herself a minute or two after I had asked Dominic Rivers to accompany me into the hallway. She might have heard Rivers and me talk, and then part company in the foyer, and she might have followed him upstairs. As for why …
“If Cecily informed Laetitia that she was pregnant,” I said, “or better yet, if someone else informed her, so that it looked like Cecily was keeping it from her?—”
Christopher nodded. “She might well have concluded that it was Crispin’s baby, and that Cecily was here to throw a spanner into the engagement works. And if she did do…”
“She might have decided that Cecily needed to lose the baby.”
He flicked me a look. “You don’t think she would have tried to kill her?”
“I don’t see why she would have done,” I said, thinking it through, “when the miscarriage might be written off as an accident, and would accomplish the goal more safely than murder. If Cecily remained pregnant, Crispin might be forced to marry her, but if there was no baby, there would be no need for anything to change. Cecily didn’t have to die for that to happen.”
Christopher nodded. “And as you say, why do something drastic when something less drastic is just as likely to work?”
“Precisely. After all, if she got caught and went to prison, she would lose him that way, too.”
Christopher shook his head with a sigh. “I don’t understand it, Pippa. We look enough alike to be twins, or so you’ve told me more than once.”
“Crispin and you, do you mean?” I nodded. “I don’t think you’d find anyone who would disagree with that. When you first started at Eton, you told me that people got you mixed up all the time.”
