Page 97 of Mischief at Marsden Manor
I sniggered. “Don’t get me wrong, Tom. I’m appreciative. I’m probably more appreciative than Christopher.” Because I certainly hadn’t forgotten that low-voiced quarrel I had once overheard in our foyer in the London flat, in which Christopher had hissed that he hadn’t needed Tom’s help, and Tom had told him that well, that was just too bad, wasn’t it? “But it’s easy to get carried away when it’s personal.”
I thought about tacking an ‘isn’t it?’ onto that last sentence, but decided to hold it back. There was no sense in making things worse, after all. They were both as pink as piglets as it was, and avoiding each other’s eyes.
“At any rate,” I added, “he probably wouldn’t think of her as a suspect. Do you?”
“As far as I’m concerned,” Tom said, rallying now that the conversation had moved on from the personal back to business, “everyone is a suspect until I have proven that they’re not.”
“So you’re looking at the staff as well as the guests?”
“We’ve checked alibis for all of them, yes. None of the staff could have shot at you, of course—” He dared a glance at Christopher now, “as they were busy inside the house at the time of the shoot. The maids stayed on the first floor or below. None of them made it upstairs.”
“Except for Nellie.”
“So it seems. No one knew anything about the cup of tea for Miss Fletcher. Nellie said she took a cup of tea to Miss Peckham in the earlier part of the evening?—”
I nodded. “Different cup of tea, though. And it was hours before we went upstairs. Cecily was dancing at that point.”
“I didn’t think it was the same cup,” Tom said. “Just that that was the only cup of tea anyone mentioned.”
“The kitchen staff was probably done for the day by the time the second cup of tea was made. It was late. And if the kitchen was empty, anyone could have gone in there and made it.”
“The Fortescues and the Marsdens, elder and younger, all deny having been on the second floor at any point today. Geoffrey admits to walking Violet to her door last night. Lord St George, of course, was up there, as well.”
“But not when Dominic Rivers was killed,” I said. “He was on the lawn with us and with Constable Collins when we think that happened.”
Tom nodded. “Yes, Pippa. No one thinks Lord St George is guilty of either of these murders.”
It was my turn to flush. “My apologies.”
Tom smirked. “No matter. It’s easy to get carried away when it’s personal, isn’t it?”
“You tosser,” I told him. “That’s the last time I hold back when speaking to you.”
Christopher sniggered. “Turnabout is fair play, Pippa. And you can’t say that he doesn’t have the right.”
Of course not. “Moving on, then. What else can we tell you, Tom? Any other plot holes that need filling in?”
Tom looked down at his notebook, but before he had the chance to say anything, there was a quick rap on the door, which then opened a crack. Constable Collins stuck his nose in. “Pardon me, Sarge?”
“Yes, Collins,” Tom said.
Collins pushed the door open far enough that he was able to come through, and then he pushed it shut again behind him.
“We found this in the young lady’s room.”
He held out a hand. In it was a handkerchief, and inside that was a small glass vial. He placed it on the table, still on top of the handkerchief, and we all leaned in.
The vial was about the size of my thumb, and unmarked. The stopper was still in it, although there was nothing left to stopper, really. A smear of some clear, thick liquid in the bottom, that spread out into a slick as the bottle went horizontal, but not enough of it to reach the opening, even lying flat.
“Which young lady’s room?” Tom looked from the bottle up at Collins, who was leaning on the back of my chair with one gloved hand. “The dead one, the poisoned one, or one of the others?”
“The poor young lady who’s ill, Detective Sergeant.”
Tom nodded. “I was afraid maybe you’d come to tell me that she’d died.”
Collins shook his head. “No, sir. Doctor’s sitting with her—there’s no rush on the post mortem for the young man; we know what killed him—and so far she’s holding on.”
“But you searched her room?”
