Crispin, who was oozing along behind us, scoffed. “How terribly old-fashioned of you, Kit. Couldn’t we at least make it a rousing game of mah-jongg or gin rummy?”
“There’s the gramophone,” I said. “We could dance. Or listen to something, at least.”
“Not tonight, Pippa.” Aunt Roz spoke from behind me, where she was being escorted into the foyer by Uncle Herbert. “Not quite the thing, you know, with two people murdered and a police investigation going on.”
Of course not. “My apologies. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Bridge, then?” Christopher said.
“I could play a game of bridge,” Aunt Roz said. “Charlotte?”
Aunt Charlotte murmured that she’d be delighted. Three minutes later, the members of the older generation were settled around one of the tables in the billiards room, watched over by a dozen mounted heads of deer, antelope, and the like. Crispin and Francis had gravitated towards an open window on the far wall, where they were smoking a cigarette each. Crispin had his dangling between elegant fingers, only occasionally lifting it to his lips, while Francis was taking frequent, short drags that made him look angry, like a puffing dragon.
“Fancy joining them?” Christopher wanted to know with a glance in that direction.
I shook my head. “You go ahead. I’ve had about all I can stand of St George for one evening.”
“He wouldn’t constantly needle you if you didn’t constantly snipe at him, you know,” Christopher said.
I snorted. “Yes, he would. Besides, I don’t constantly snipe at him.”
“You snipe at him enough.”
“Enough for what?”
Christopher rolled his eyes, and I grinned. “You go on over there. I think I’m going to head up to my room. I have some thinking to do.”
He lowered his voice. “About this mess?”
“What else?”
“Then I’d rather go with you. We can think together.”
That suited me very well. Christopher might have some additional insight about his various family members and what they were capable of. “Let’s go, then.”
“After you.” He bowed me towards the door.
THIRTEEN
At the topof the stairs we went left. It was quieter in the west wing, with me as the only guest, and that made it less likely that we’d be overheard.
Or at least that was how I had reasoned it out when I told Christopher, “This way,” at the top of the staircase. It wasn’t until we had turned the corner from the central wing into the west wing that I realized how wrong I had been.
A door halfway down the hallway was standing open. Light was spilling out, and from inside we could hear the rustling of fabric and a voice.
“—no problem at all, Mrs. Mason.”
The voice was masculine, a pleasant baritone, and next to me, Christopher stiffened. The reason became clear a moment later, with the next sentence from Mrs. Mason. “Very kind of you, Mr. Gardiner.”
Tom must have been smiling. I could hear it in his voice. Very friendly and approachable. I wondered whether he’d been born with it, or whether it was something they taught you when you joined Scotland Yard. “It seems the least I can do, when we’re putting you to all this trouble.”
I deduced they were making the bed, and that Tom was helping Mrs. Mason get the rooms for the unexpected guests ready. Normally, one of the housemaids would be doing that duty, but with two handsome, young men involved, Mrs. Mason might have found it safer to take on the task herself.
And she probably wasn’t afraid that one of the maids would let herself be tumbled onto the fresh sheets. I’m sure it was more a concern that someone would be loose-lipped around the handsome young detectives, and might articulate some secret about the household that Tidwell and Mrs. Mason wouldn’t want articulated.
“It’s no trouble,” Mrs. Mason said firmly. And added, after a moment, “Lady Roz says you went to school with some of her boys.”
Aunt Roz is popular with the servants, both at the Hall, at Beckwith Place, and in Town, and they use her informal title rather than her formal one around the house.
