Page 46 of Peril in Piccadilly
When he put it like that, perhaps I didn’t, either.
“Any other ideas?” I inquired. “If Wolfgang doesn’t have a motive for killing me, and Laetitia doesn’t have the means because she’s in Dorset, who else is on the list?”
“Might be someone who doesn’t like men in evening gowns,” Christopher said lightly, as if it was in any way all right to run someone down because you don’t like how they’re dressed.
“Do people do that?”
“I haven’t had it happen to me. But I think most people look at Kitty and think she’s a girl.”
Yes, I could see that. He isn’t the most masculine-looking bloke even when he’s dressed like one—he’s tallish for a girl, but not much taller than Lady Laetitia, and slender, with narrow shoulders and a pretty face, big eyes, and a soft cupid’s-bow mouth—so he doesn’t look too different from the rest of us girls in our drop waist dresses and cropped hair.
“That’s awful,” I said, and Christopher nodded, “but I’d be very surprised if that were the case. If most people look at Kitty and think she—you—is a girl, then it’s not likely that a random cabbie can tell the difference from a distance.”
Christopher lifted a shoulder. “Might have been someone who followed us from the Cave of the Golden Calf.”
“Someone other than Wolfgang, do you mean? Like the bloke you were dancing with? He’d be more likely to try to take out Tom, don’t you think?”
I saw a flash of worry cross Christopher’s face at the idea of that, that the Hackney cab might have followed Tom after it tried to run us down, but then he shook his head. “Only until he noticed that Tom was driving a police-issue Tender, surely. You don’t run down a copper in front of Scotland Yard and live to tell the tale.”
Likely not. “Do you know him well? The chap at the nightclub?”
“Not to say well,” Christopher said. “I’ve seen him around. We’ve danced before.”
“Does he have enough of an emotional attachment to you that he’d want to hurt you—or Tom—for leaving the nightclub the way you did?”
Christopher snorted. “I’d hardly think so. Nothing’s ever happened between us.”
“Nothing’s ever happened between me and St George, either,” I pointed out, “and apparently that hasn’t stopped him from developing an emotional attachment.”
He stared at me, incredulously. “You and Crispin grew up together, Pippa. How can you say that nothing ever happened between you?”
“Nothing romantic. Nothing that would make him think falling in love with me,” my face puckered, “was a good idea.”
“I’m sure he knew when it happened that it wasn’t a good idea.” Christopher shook his head. “No, I doubt the chap from the nightclub came after me with a murderous Hackney. Any other bright ideas?”
I thought about it for a moment while I took a sip of my now-cool tea. “Someone who thought you were Laetitia and saw an opportunity to get rid of her?”
“And who might that be?” Christopher took a sip of his own genial beverage before putting the cup on the table the better to use his fingers to check off suspects. “It wasn’t you. It wasn’t Crispin.”
I opened my mouth to protest—it could certainly have been Crispin; he had the best motive of anyone, since no one else was looking at a lifetime of being married to Laetitia—but I closed it again when Christopher continued.
“He’s either in Dorset or Wiltshire, and if he isn’t, he’s probably with her. And if he isn’t with her, he would still know that it wasn’t Laetitia crossing the street with you. He knows you well enough to know that the two of you would never be here together, and he knows me well enough to recognize me, even in a gown and wig.”
“Fine,” I conceded. “Not Crispin. I don’t think anyone else in the family is in London this weekend. Who else is there?”
“I imagine the people who dislike Laetitia Marsden are legion,” Christopher said, “but in this case I was thinking specifically of the gentleman who burgled Marsden House last night.”
The gentleman burglar? “Why would he want to kill her?”
“Because she saw him,” Christopher said triumphantly. “And he knows that she saw him.”
“But she didn’t recognize him. Or she would have told the police who he was.”
“But he doesn’t know that,” Christopher said. “Or perhaps he’s afraid that if she thinks about it further, she’ll remember something that might incriminate him. Or if she doesn’t know who he is now, if she sees him again, she’ll recognize him.”
“That seems like a rather paltry excuse for murder. Besides, if he wanted her dead, why not simply kill her last night before he left?”
“Trying to make it look like an accident?” Christopher suggested. “As for paltry… do you have any idea what the Sutherland parure is worth?”
