“My head hurts,” I said. “How about we get some fresh air before tea? And find something else to talk about?”
“We can try,” Christopher said darkly, “but I think it’s going to be a while before I can think about anything else, honestly.”
After a moment, he added, “At least until someone’s been arrested, who isn’t me.”
“You’re not going to be arrested.” I stood up and held out my hand to him. “I won’t let them arrest you.”
“I don’t think there’s a lot you can do about it if they do,” Christopher said, but he got to his feet and put his hand in mine.
TWELVE
By supper,Doctor Curtis had withdrawn from Sutherland Hall with both bodies. The local mortuary had sent two motorcars for their conveyance, and Doctor Curtis had gone along, presumably to do the autopsy on the late duke. I imagined no autopsy would be necessary for Grimsby, as it was hardly a secret how he had died. A gunshot wound at close range straight into the heart tends to be immediately fatal, and surely no autopsy was required to confirm it.
Inside the Hall, Scotland Yard had taken over the breakfast room as their domain, but only Chief Inspector Pendennis had spent much time there. After the interviews, both Finchley and Tom Gardiner had gone to work plying their trades throughout the house. The duke’s bedchamber was photographed and dusted for fingerprints on every available surface, and so was the gun room as well as the late duke’s study, presumably to see who might have accessed the drawer where the keys to the gun cabinets were kept.
I hadn’t been in the duke’s study and hadn’t touched the keys, so I wasn’t worried—not on my own behalf, at least—but on the other hand, it’s extremely difficult to prove a negative, and I could have easily accessed the study and opened the drawer with my traveling gloves still on, and nobody would have been any the wiser.
As a result of everything, we all became quite jumpy as the evening wore on. The police took their cold supper in the breakfast room—cold, because things were topsy-turvy below-stairs as well as above. Aunt Charlotte, in a fit of socialism, had invited the detectives to sup with the rest of us, but Pendennis had declined, either out of finer feelings or because he didn’t want his underlings to mingle too comfortably with the suspects.
He must have known of Thomas Gardiner’s relationship to the younger Astleys. Francis wasn’t known for being reticent, and I assumed he had greeted Tom with all due excitement upon his arrival. Nor was it likely, really, that Tom would have kept the information from his superior.
It occurred to me—quite belatedly, and I felt stupid for not realizing it sooner—that when Pendennis had left Tom in the dining room with the rest of us, it might not have been because he thought Tom would put us at ease, but rather because he thought that some of us might feel so comfortable with Tom that we’d speak about things in front of him that we would not have brought up in front of Finchley or Pendennis himself.
And Tom would, of course, share those things with his colleagues. Because, as Christopher had so eloquently pointed out, he and Tom weren’t friends. They had seen each other a handful of times over the past ten years, and Tom owed Christopher very little. He certainly didn’t owe him loyalty over and above the loyalty to his job and his superior.
At any rate, they supped alone. And so did we. And it was grim, and silent, and featured occasional bursts of awkward conversation that had no bearing on what was going on across the hall. I guess none of us felt that we could really talk about what we were all thinking, which I’m sure was that one of us was a murderer.
At least that’s what I was thinking, as I sat there quietly between Francis and Christopher and poked at my cold roast beef with skinned cherry tomatoes in horseradish sauce and cold asparagus.
One of us was a murderer.
Or, to put it a bit more charitably, it was possible that one of us was a murderer. It was also possible that the autopsy would show that the late duke had died a natural death, and it was quite possible, perhaps even likely, that the person who had shot Grimsby was below-stairs instead of up here with us.
But one of us might be a murderer.
It wasn’t me. I knew at least that much.
And it wasn’t Christopher. He’d been quite close to proposing to me when the news about the duke’s demise came, so clearly Christopher would go to great lengths so as not to have to murder his grandfather, and I refused to believe he had it in him to shoot Grimsby.
Besides, Christopher wouldn’t have known that Grimsby was going to be in the garden maze. They had arranged to meet in the formal garden. I had heard them. When Grimsby didn’t show up there, Christopher wouldn’t have known where to find him. And the center of the hedge maze isn’t the type of place you simply stumble on.
So not Christopher. Not that I’d believed it anyway.
I slanted a look to my left. Francis’s hands were shaking enough that he had a hard time cutting up his roast beef. While that could be due to nerves, it could equally well be due to withdrawal from his drug of choice. For all I knew, Scotland Yard might have found and confiscated it. It surely wasn’t legal to be in possession of.
Or perhaps it was, and Francis was simply abusing the amount he was taking of a perfectly legal narcotic.
At any rate, he was shaking. He certainly had reason to be upset with Grimsby, if the valet was the one who had told the late duke about Francis’s drug habit. And if the duke had threatened to cut Francis off—from the drugs he needed to get through his days and nights, or from the money he needed to acquire them—then Francis would have had a strong reason to want the duke dead, as well.
He knew where the guns were kept. And more importantly, he knew how to use them.
Last night, while I’d been hiding in the corner of the conservatory, the light in Francis’s room had gone out. He could have gone to bed at that point, of course. That’s what he had told Tom he’d done, and his explanation had certainly made sense.
Or he might have been lying, and had turned out the light prior to coming downstairs. He could have taken the main staircase down, gone directly through the drawing room, across the terrasse, and into the maze.
Francis has the same fair hair as the rest of the men in the family, and he knew the twists and turns of the maze as well as any of us. It could have been him I’d seen out of the corner of my eye later.
So motive, means, and opportunity for Francis.
