Page 15 of Peril in Piccadilly
“You may have heard him pick it up?” Tom suggested, and Laetitia nodded. “Had you closed the door when you went to bed? Do you know how he made it into the house?”
Laetitia shook her head. “The windows in my room were shut, so I know he didn’t come in that way. The door to the hallway was closed but unlocked. He must have come from there.”
Tom nodded. He scribbled a few words in the little notebook that was open on his knee. “At what time did you come home last night?”
Laetitia looked at Crispin. He looked back at her.
“I took the underground home,” I said into the silence. “When I got to the flat, it was after eleven. St George showed up perhaps thirty minutes later.”
Christopher nodded, his eyes limpid, even as he smothered a smirk. “I agree with Pippa. It was close to midnight when Crispin arrived.”
“You must have dropped Lady Laetitia off around eleven-thirty, then, St George? Unless you stopped somewhere on the way to the Essex House Mansions? No? What did you do when you arrived home, Lady Laetitia?”
“Thompson opened the door,” Laetitia said. “I said goodnight and went up to my room. The maid was already in bed—I thought I would be home later than I was, so I had told her not to wait up for me…”
She directed a look of deep disappointment Crispin’s way. He pretended not to notice.
“I undressed on my own and went to bed. I left my frock on the chair and my jewelry on the toilet table for the maid to deal with tomorrow morning. This morning now.”
Tom took the statement down, dutifully. “Is there a clock in your room, Lady Laetitia? No? How long would you say that you had been asleep when you were woken up?”
Laetitia shook her head in a very desultory, helpless fashion.
“Evans rang up our flat at half four,” I contributed, “but I don’t know how long it would have taken the footman to make it from Sutherland House to Bloomsbury after Lady Laetitia arrived. I suppose that depends on how upset she was.”
The look she sent me could have peeled the skin from my bones, and her voice was crisp when she told Tom, “It was perhaps forty-five minutes from the time I was woken up until I made it to Sutherland House and discovered that Crispin wasn’t there.”
Disappointment and blame curdled around every syllable of those last few words. Crispin looked like he had taken an arrow to the heart, or at least to the belly.
“Buck up, St George,” I told him unkindly. “All is well that ends well. Your fiancée is fine, and now you can buy her a prettier engagement ring than that monstrosity that’s been passed down in the family for the past five centuries.”
“The Sutherland engagement ring is an irreplaceable heirloom that dates from 1682, I’ll have you know, Darling.”
Laetitia looked at him, and he added, “Philippa.”
“I’m well aware of it,” I said, “Crispin.”
We both wrinkled our noses and I added, “I’ve seen it in half the portraits in the portrait gallery at Sutherland Hall. And it’s an ugly, heavy thing. I’m certain Laetitia would prefer something less likely to give her muscle strain every time she lifts her hand.”
Crispin twitched a brow, first at her and then back at me. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? It’s gone, along with the matching earrings.”
Laetitia looked wretched. “I’m sorry, darling.”
“It’s not your fault,” Crispin told her. “Philippa is simply being her usual ray of sunshine.”
He patted her hand, right where the engagement ring would have been, had it still been on her finger. I smirked and turned to Tom. “Sorry to take over the conversation.”
“No matter.” He barely spared me a glance. “So, Lady Laetitia, it is your statement that the break-in might have happened around three or three-thirty.”
Laetitia nodded. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more specifically.”
“Very few people can,” Tom said calmly, “when they’re woken up in the middle of the night. I’m surprised this chap was here so late, frankly. He usually visits in the evening, when the occupants are out to supper and the staff is busy.”
Neither one of us said anything, and he added, “Would you tell me about the staff, Lady Laetitia?”
She did, a bit desultorily. Perhaps she wasn’t certain who was who at the Marsdens’ London house. I wasn’t surprised. Laetitia wasn’t the type to notice the servants.
“Do you know whether anything else was taken?” Tom wanted to know, and Laetitia admitted, a bit shame-facedly, that she hadn’t stopped to check. Her only concern had been to get to Crispin.
