And then when I made it down to the dining room—Scotland Yard was still using the breakfast room—Aunt Roz was there, and I didn’t want to discuss the matter in front of her.
She looked rather worse for wear, and I mean that in the kindest way possible. Like the rest of us, she had planned to come to Sutherland Hall for tea and perhaps an overnight stay. Now, like the rest of us, she was stuck here until the police decided to let us leave, with only what she had packed into a weekend bag that was surely no bigger than mine, and with the concern that her father-in-law had been murdered and one of her relatives might hang for it.
And yes, I was in that position, too. But I wasn’t in my fifties, they weren’t my husband and my children, and I was still sleeping reasonably well. Aunt Roz had dark circles under her eyes, and the grooves running from her nose to the sides of her mouth were dug deeper than I was used to seeing them. There was a tiny divot in the middle of her forehead, where she was drawing her brows together in a worried frown.
When I sailed through the door, in the same skirt and blouse for the third day in a row, she greeted me with what was undoubtedly intended to be a welcoming smile. “Pippa! Good morning!”
“Morning!” I said, equally brightly. “Lovely day out there.”
Aunt Roz glanced at the window, which was mostly covered with the heavy drapes befitting a room that’s mostly used at night. “If you say so.”
“Well, I haven’t been out in it. But it looks nice from the windows.”
I picked a plate from the sideboard and started filling it. A spoonful of eggs, a sausage, a piece of ham, tomatoes…
When I sat down at the table, after adding toast, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of coffee, Aunt Roz’s eyes fell on my arm. “Dear me. What happened there?”
“Oh.” I gave the regularly spaced blotches of ink on my sleeve a disgruntled look. “I forgot to give my blouse to the maids to clean yesterday. Your nephew got fingerprint ink on my sleeve.”
“Crispin?” She contemplated the evenly spaced marks with her head tilted. “Why would Crispin grab your wrist like that?”
“He wanted my attention,” I said, just as Her Grace, Charlotte, Duchess of Sutherland, rounded the corner into the dining room.
She must have heard the last few sentences, because she came in with her eyes on my sleeve and her mouth twisted into a moue of displeasure. “Crispin did that? I’ll talk to him.”
“There’s no need,” I said, as she made her way towards the sideboard. “I’ve already let him know I didn’t appreciate it.”
I might have been mistaken, because it wasn’t easy to tell, but I rather think I saw the corners of her lips turn up. As if she were pleased I’d put her son in his place. She probably knew all about his shenanigans in Town, and perhaps it made her happy that there was one woman, among all the others, who didn’t fall for Crispin’s dubious charms.
“I wouldn’t even be wearing it,” I added, “but I didn’t bring enough clothes for an extended stay. We thought we’d be back in London yesterday afternoon.”
Aunt Roz nodded. “I’m wearing the same skirt for the third day in a row, too. I doubt we’d be able to find anything worth having in the village, but Salisbury isn’t far. Not if we take the motorcar. Do you suppose the police would let us go shopping if we asked nicely?”
Tom might. “It couldn’t hurt to ask,” I said. “Would you like me to go across the hall?”
“Finish your breakfast first, Pippa.” She forked up a bit of sausage of her own and conveyed it to her mouth. I’m sure it tasted just fine—with the exception of the roast duck on the evening the old duke died, and that was understandable, all the food from the Hall kitchen tastes good—but from her expression, it might as well have been sawdust. “Would you like to come with us, Charlotte?”
“I don’t know—” Aunt Charlotte said, but before she could finish, her son had interrupted her.
“Come with you where?”
He looked better than last night, so perhaps he was so used to getting sozzled at night that waking up in the morning doesn’t present a problem. Aside from some faintly purple shadows under his eyes—which we all had, to be fair, and they were nowhere near as dark as Aunt Roz’s—he looked just as usual. Completely and properly dressed, shaved, hair immaculate, sneer in place. “Good morning, Mother. Aunt Roslyn. Darling.” He gave me a nod.
Aunt Charlotte had her mouth open to speak, but before she could, Aunt Roz got in first. “We’re hoping to take the motorcar to Salisbury to do some shopping. None of us brought enough to wear, and Pippa’s blouse is beyond repair.”
Crispin nodded, with an almost imperceptible flicker of his eyes to my sleeve. “I’ll drive you.”
“That’s not necessary,” Aunt Roz assured him. “I’m sure Wilkins—” The chauffeur. The one with the habit of taking the duke’s Crossley to Southampton, “would be happy to oblige.”
“It would be my pleasure,” Crispin told her formally, and without so much as a smug twinkle in his eyes. “It’s the least I can do, after befouling Darling’s blouse.”
“Crispin, dear—” his mother began, wincing, but was drowned out again by Crispin’s talking over her.
“I’ll buy you a new one, Darling.”
“I’m not having you buy me clothes, St George,” I told him. “I don’t care if you were the one who ruined it in the first place. You’re not buying me a new one. I can buy my own clothes.”
“Of course, Darling.” He made a mock bow, full of all the smugness he had left after the assurance to Aunt Roz.
