Although if he’d killed Grimsby over what was in the notes, it made absolutely no sense that he’d leave them with me, even in an effort to make me look guilty. My own notes, sure. Christopher’s, yes, because if I’d killed Grimsby, it would have been over what he did to Christopher, not over anything he did to me. But why would Crispin share his own offenses with me?
It made no sense.
And all that aside, the notes were here. Was I really principled enough not to read them, when I had them in front of me and they might be full of ammunition I could use against St George later?
Clearly I wasn’t. I leaned forward and began to decipher Grimsby’s cramped writing. Due to the overabundance of information, it was even smaller and more crabbed than on Christopher’s sheet.
Below the affluence of names, and Crispin’s birthday—June 5th, 1903, which was circled, and the circle had the initials L.M. with a question mark next to it—the gossip went on for the entire back and front of the sheet. There was even scribbles vertically in the margins.
And it made sense, I realized, since, when Crispin came up to London, he stayed at Sutherland House, where the staff was loyal to His Grace and thus to Grimsby. It was abundantly clear that they had had no compunctions whatsoever about sharing what they had seen and heard over the past couple of years. There were stories of Crispin staggering in at nine in the morning, still sozzled to the gills, with his wallet and all his money gone. There were stories of Crispin, clearly under the influence of alcohol or something else, wrapping a Ballot 2 LTS racing car around a light pole somewhere in the West End and walking away with nothing worse than a bump on the head, laughing. There were stories of Crispin coming home drunk and angry, destroying the duke’s sitting room when he wasn’t served more alcohol fast enough. Stories of Crispin coming home half dressed, with his shirt half buttoned, his emerald cufflinks missing, and with lipstick stains on his collar and neck. Stories of Crispin not coming home at all, but spending the night in jail, sobering up.
A story of a woman coming to the door of Sutherland House carrying a baby, looking for the baby’s father.
I hadn’t heard anything about that, so Crispin—or someone else—must have managed to hush it up. I wondered whether he truly was the father of the baby, or whether it was just a ploy to get money from him. When you’re young and handsome and the heir to a title and a massive fortune, it could equally well be either. I had watched women pursue Christopher with a single-mindedness that was disturbing, and he wasn’t the heir to the dukedom and the bulk of the money. It was worse for Crispin, I was quite sure. And given the way he was carrying on, it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that someone would try to snag him with an illegitimate child ploy.
Not that I would put it past him to dally with a girl who ended up with child, either. It seemed very much in character for him to look to his own pleasure first, and her future second. But I would have expected him to deal with it honorably if he did. Since I hadn’t heard anything about this, I was inclined to believe it might have been a lie.
Her name had not made it into the narrative, but there were plenty of other women mentioned by name, including the three Christopher had told Tom Gardiner about earlier. All were part of the set of very fast Bright Young Things Crispin hung around with while in London. A couple of heiresses, the granddaughter of a famous painter, and another actress of the burlesque variety had names I recognized.
There were so many of them, it was hard to believe he’d had time to woo them all. Then again, maybe there wasn’t a lot of wooing involved. Maybe their morals—Crispin’s included—were so loose that they all just fell into bed with one another willy-nilly, whenever the desire struck.
My face puckered. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. I may be modern, but I’m not promiscuous. And much as I abhor Crispin—and I’m sure I’ve made it clear just how very much I do—it was difficult to look at this list of… they weren’t even peccadillos, were they? They were honest to goodness vices, or big, whopping sins, at least if you’re of the persuasion that such things exist. Drunkenness, debauchery, fornication…
Or alternatively, if I wanted to be kind and understanding, which doesn’t come naturally to me on the subject of Crispin St George, they were cries for help.
At any rate, it was difficult to look at the list and not feel a little bit sorry for him. Not to mention a bit angry with Uncle Harold, who had to have known that this was going on. Surely the staff at the house in Town would have reported all these happenings to the Hall? How could Uncle Harold look at this behavior and justify telling Crispin the things we’d overheard yesterday? Why not just let him marry the girl he thought he was in love with, even if she was unsuitable? At least that way, the rest of the family wouldn’t have to watch him distract himself with alcohol and women and motorcar accidents because his life didn’t seem worth living.
My face twisted, halfway appalled at what I had read, and equally appalled that I felt sincere pity for Crispin, who surely would not want that, especially from me.
Back to business, I told myself. Was there anything here to indicate that Crispin had killed Grimsby, taken the notebook pages, and hidden them in my room?
None of what I had read about him, I had to assume, was secret. The staff at Sutherland House had given Grimsby all this information; there was nothing here about following Crispin around, the way Grimsby had stolen after Christopher across London. Unless Grimsby had discovered something about Crispin that wasn’t in the notes, I could see no motive for murder.
And how likely was it that Grimsby had kept some of Crispin’s sins out of the notebook when he had detailed Christopher’s and mine, the ones he had shared with the duke as well as the ones he had kept to himself?
From what Tom had told us, I had to assume that the same had been true for what Grimsby had known about Francis and Aunt Roz.
So in spite of having been the person to find the body, always a suspicious position, Crispin didn’t seem to have had much of a motive for killing Grimsby.
Unless the blackmail was not the reason for Grimsby’s murder, of course. I had assumed it was, because it made for such a nice, tidy motive. But what if it was, instead, in detective novel parlance, a red herring? What if Grimsby had been killed because he knew something about the late duke’s death, instead?
Crispin had motive there, if the duke hadn’t been willing to let him marry the girl he wanted. But even without that, he was now the Viscount St George, one step closer to the dukedom, and a single death away from being duke himself.
And if Grimsby had known—suspected, even guessed—that Crispin had killed the duke, then Crispin had reason to want Grimsby out of the way, too.
Perhaps Grimsby had decided to blackmail Crispin over that, and now here we were, full circle. Grimsby had been killed because he was a blackmailer after all. It was just over something much, much more dangerous than the few closely guarded personal failings in Grimsby’s notebook.
And what’s more, it would also explain why Crispin might have left his own dossier in with mine and Christopher’s when he hid the sheets in my weekender bag. (Assuming he did, of course. It doesn’t do to get too enamored with one’s own theories.) He would have read them first, and would have realized that they included nothing compromising, and so he might have felt safe in including them. Making me feel sorry for him might have struck him as a humorous side benefit. Something else I wouldn’t put past him.
I wondered whether Tom had gone downstairs to the incident room yet, or whether he was still across the hall talking to Christopher. The sooner I passed these papers off to the proper authorities, the better it would look for me, I imagined. And perhaps for Christopher, too.
I used the letter opener to gather and fold the sheets again, and then I slid them carefully into an unused envelope I found in the escritoire. That done, I headed out into the hallway, envelope in hand.
The west wing was deserted. The door to the room where I had left Christopher with Tom earlier was open now, and no one was inside. The other two rooms put to use for Scotland Yard were equally empty, their doors open and lamps lit to make it easy for the detectives to make their way there later. I assumed this meant the representatives of law and order were still hard at work downstairs.
The light was on under Aunt Roz’s door again, the way it had been last night, and I skirted it carefully. There was a murmur of voices from within tonight, so Uncle Herbert must be there, too, and awake. Unless Aunt Roz was reading out loud to herself, I suppose.
I thought about sweeping down the main staircase, but of course I was in my pyjamas, and besides, I wanted to share what I had found with Christopher before I handed the evidence over to the police. So instead, I continued past the top of the staircase towards the east wing.
