Page 12 of Peril in Piccadilly
Laetitia glanced at him, bottom lip quivering. She shook her head. “I waited until I heard the front door close. When I was certain he was gone, I called for Thompson.”
That was a bit less understandable, and not really admirable at all. She might at least have called out as soon as she heard his footsteps on the stairs, once he was far enough away that he couldn’t have come back before she had a chance to lock the door against him, but before he was outside in the street and away.
It wasn’t my place to say anything about it, however, and by then we had reached Marsden House anyway. I put it out of my mind. Crispin pulled the Hispano-Suiza to a stop under the portico outside the front door and turned off the motor. Blessed silence descended.
Like Sutherland House, the Marsden family’s Town residence was a Georgian monstrosity of three stories or so that took up quite a large part of a city block just around the corner from Park Lane. And like Sutherland House, it looked staid and conservative. Or it would have done, were it not for the fact that every light in the house was on, and that the front door stood wide open. At the bottom of the steps stood what was easily recognizable as a police issue Crossley Tender.
A tall, rather handsome individual of around fifty years of age stood in the open door. “Miss Laetitia.” He inclined his head. “You’re back. And with Lord St George.”
He bowed to Crispin, as well.
“Hullo, Thompson,” the latter said blithely, while Laetitia nodded.
“Yes, Thompson. I went to fetch Lord St George.”
“The police are here,” Christopher commented, and Thompson turned to inspect him. It took him but a second to peg Christopher as being related to Crispin—they look enough alike to be brothers—and another to figure out exactly who he was.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Astley. They arrived a few minutes ago.”
“May we come in?”
Thompson glanced at Laetitia, who nodded.
“Of course, Mr. Astley.”
Thompson stood aside. Crispin presented Laetitia with his elbow, and she latched on and swept past Thompson into the house, quite as if they were entering some ballroom somewhere after being announced as the guests of honor. Christopher watched, and then turned to me with a smirk as he presented his own elbow. I placed my fingers on his arm in the same manner Laetitia had done, and we breezed past Thompson with our noses in the air. Christopher winked at the butler on his way past. “Thank you, Thompson.”
“Of course, Mr. Astley.”
Thompson shut the door behind us.
The foyer was tall and lovely, with a checkerboard marble floor and a two-story ceiling. To the left and right were hallways reaching into the back of the house. Sutherland House was set up in a similar manner, and I assumed that the formal rooms were down one corridor while the servants quarters and kitchen were down the other. The family’s bedrooms and sitting-out room would be upstairs, along with the guest rooms.
That was also from whence the sounds were coming. And when I say sounds, I mean footsteps and voices, at least one of them recognizable.
“Tom,” Christopher said.
I nodded. “I assume the police are upstairs in Lady Laetitia’s room, Thompson?”
“Yes, Miss Darling,” Thompson said. I hadn’t been introduced, of course, nor had I ever been here before, but he must know the Astley family tree, and its assorted hangers-on, well enough to have placed me.
Or perhaps Laetitia had mentioned me. I wouldn’t put it past her to grouse about me to the servants; she had certainly done so to her mother, who had taken against me long before we’d been privileged to meet face to face.
“Would you mind if we went upstairs?” I inquired politely.
Thompson hesitated. Perhaps he was unused to being asked for permission, or perhaps he simply didn’t want us wandering anywhere unsupervised. He slanted a look at Laetitia, but she had pulled Crispin into a room to the right of the foyer—somewhere with a bar cart, at a guess—and was of no help.
“We’ll only be a minute,” Christopher said persuasively. “We just want to say hello to Detective Sergeant Gardiner.”
“Of course, Mr. Astley.” Thompson didn’t sound certain, but he did, at least, not try to stop us.
“It really will only be a minute,” I told him, as Christopher tugged me towards the staircase. “Could we have some tea for when we come back down, Thompson? It’s a bit early for spirits.”
“Of course, Miss Darling.” Thompson moved towards the hallway on the left, washing his hands of us as we headed up the stairs.
The first floor consisted of a long hallway with doors on both sides, and at the end, another, less ostentatious staircase up to the second floor, where there were more servants’ quarters and perhaps a nursery and such. We didn’t bother with that. A door stood open halfway along the hallway, whence the voices came. We made our way there and peered inside.
I hadn’t taken the opportunity to look at Laetitia’s bedchamber at Marsden Manor when we’d been in Dorset last month. I had, however, seen Constance’s room, which was lovely, and Christopher’s and Francis’s shared room, which was also lovely, and my room, and Cecily Fletcher’s room, and Dominic Rivers’s room—all of which were lovely, as well. It came as no surprise that this bedroom was lovely, and approximately twice the size of my bedroom in the mansion flat at the Essex House.
