“Can anyone not account for their time at any point?”
There was a pause. I took the opportunity to fill it. “I was alone for a bit between tea and supper last night. I was in my room, but I can’t prove it. Other than that, I’ve been with someone else pretty much every moment since I got here. For most of it, it’s been Christopher. We took a walk around the grounds before tea, and again after supper…”
Christopher raised his head to look at me.
“You were outside last evening after supper?” Gardiner asked.
“Just for a short walk before bed. Around the formal garden. We wanted some fresh air. It had been a long day, between the traveling and the duke’s temper tantrums, and then finding out about his death…”
There. I gave myself a mental pat on the back. I had gotten the fake alibi out, and made it sound reasonably convincing. And I had done it in front of Christopher, so now he knew I was committed to the lie and he could make use of it, too.
He was looking at me from across the table, and I gave him a reassuring smile. There was absolutely nobody around to say differently, after all. Crispin had seen us come in together, but he hadn’t seen me while I was hiding in the conservatory, and as far as I knew, no one had seen Christopher while he was in the garden waiting for Grimsby to show himself, either. We could say we were together, and nobody would have any idea we were lying.
“St George let us in,” I added, for verisimilitude. “Tidwell had already locked the door from the conservatory to the Hall by the time we got there. Around eleven-thirty, wasn’t it, St George?”
Crispin looked at me across the table, his eyes still that hard silver color, almost accusing, but he nodded. “Yes. It was.”
“Did you hear a shot while you were out there?”
Christopher and I both nodded, since we had, after all, both heard it. “We didn’t think anything of it,” Christopher said. “It sounded like it came from far away, and I thought maybe poachers in the wood behind the Hall…”
“The maze could have muffled the sound,” I suggested, “maybe?”
“Where were you when you heard it?”
I looked at Christopher. I had been inside the conservatory with the door closed, so it would of necessity have sounded more distant to me. I had no idea where he’d been.
“On the east side of the house,” he said, and if his voice was a bit tight, it wasn’t very noticeable, at least not unless you knew him well. I hoped Tom didn’t know him well enough to notice. “In the formal gardens near the fountain.”
“The moonlight on the water was lovely,” I added. That ought to establish that I’d been there and seen it.
“Romantic,” Crispin commented blandly, but when I looked up, he was watching his hands, folded on the table, and not me. Tom Gardiner glanced at him, and then at me, and at Christopher, and back at Crispin.
“What about you, St George? You were downstairs when they came in? Did you hear the shot at all?”
Crispin shook his head. “I was having a drink in the parlor across from the conservatory when I heard the banging. The parlor is at the end of the east wing facing the courtyard, so pretty much as far as you can get from the garden maze. I didn’t hear anything.”
“Astley?” Tom looked at Francis.
“I’m also in the east wing, but facing the formal gardens,” Francis said. “And I did hear the shot. But it…” He hesitated. “I didn’t think it was anything I needed to investigate.”
Tom nodded. “Out of curiosity, did you think it sounded closer than Kit did?”
Christopher shot him a look, maybe because of the diminutive, maybe because Tom seemed to question his recollection of the shot, but he didn’t end up saying anything.
“I didn’t think it was someone being murdered in the garden maze,” Francis said, a bit belligerently, “if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“Of course not.” Tom’s voice was even and calm. “Kit said it sounded like it came from off the property. That it was poachers. Did you think so, too, or did you think it was closer than that?”
“I thought…” Francis stopped and looked off to the side, before he came back to the conversation. “I don’t know what I thought, Gardiner. I was in bed. I’d had a bit too much to drink. It was the end of a difficult day. My grandfather died. And gunshots…”
He shook his head. “After the war, gunshots can be a tricky thing.”
“Of course,” Tom said, and said no more. “Lady Roslyn, Lord Herbert, did you hear this gunshot?”
Aunt Roz opened her mouth to answer—and their room faced the back garden, where the maze was, so I couldn’t see how she could have avoided hearing it, unless she was dead asleep at the time—but before she could get a word out, there was a knock on the door, and then Finchley’s face appeared in the gap between door and jamb.
“Pardon me. Chief Inspector Pendennis wonders if the Viscount St George would grace him with his presence.”
