I huffed, and pushed my chair back. “I’ll go ask Tom if it’s all right if we go off for a couple of hours.”
“Your breakfast—” Aunt Charlotte began, looking at my still-full plate.
“I lost my appetite.” Damn Crispin. “I’ll let you know what the police say. And then I’ll go wake Christopher. I’m sure he’ll want to come along. He loves to shop.”
Crispin murmured something, and took my chair for himself. I gave him a sharp look, but he didn’t look at me as I turned on my heel and swept from the room.
An hour later,we were piled into the Hispano-Suiza on our way to Salisbury. The representatives for Scotland Yard hadn’t minded at all what we were doing.
“Not planning to make for the coast, are you?” Pendennis had grunted, and when I said no, we were just driving to Salisbury, he had waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. Tom had winked at me, while Finchley had stayed busy with whatever he was doing over by the sideboard. More fingerprints, most likely. Perhaps he was testing the notebook pages.
It ended up being five of us in the car. Francis was still abed, and neither Uncle Herbert nor Uncle Harold seemed inclined towards a shopping trip. They planned to spend some time together discussing the estate, now that their father was out of the picture. I had no idea why Crispin wanted to go to Salisbury, honestly, since Aunt Roz had been right: Wilkins was available, as was the Crossley, and this was precisely the sort of outing they were meant for.
However, Crispin insisted, so the rest of us piled in: Christopher in the backseat, with me and his mother on either side of him, and Aunt Charlotte in pride of place next to Crispin in the front seat. No one disputed the seating arrangements, but really, Christopher’s legs were longer than Aunt Charlotte’s, so he might have been more comfortable up front, while Aunt Charlotte would have fit better into the back seat with me and Aunt Roz. Aside from size, Aunt Roz surely had seniority of age and dignity, and should have been up front for that reason.
Then again, I didn’t imagine either of them really wanted to sit next to Crispin—I certainly didn’t—so the arrangements served as well as any others. Besides, Aunt Charlottewashis mother, so he couldn’t very well snub her by not offering her the place of honor.
We arrived in Salisbury some forty minutes after we left, having taken our lives in our hands multiple times between Sutherland Hall and town. Crispin’s desire for fast living clearly extended to the motorcar, even with passengers in it, because he drove like the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. Perhaps he just really wanted to get away from the Hall for a bit, and that was why he had offered so insistently to drive us.
Once we had parked the H6 outside the Style & Gerrish department store on Blue Boar Row, Aunt Charlotte—who had plenty of clothes; she lived at the Hall, after all—took hold of her son’s arm and towed him away to the stationary department. He looked disinclined to follow—perhaps he hadn’t given up hope of causing an uncomfortable scene by insisting on buying me a new blouse—but he’d been properly brought up, so he went with his mother. Aunt Roz, Christopher, and I headed into the ready-made ladies’ fashions department.
I won’t boreyou with a detailed description of our shopping. I’m not averse to pretty clothes, nor is Aunt Roz, and Christopher, of course, has his own reasons for being interested. We spent a pleasant hour combing the racks, and ended up with a twill skirt and blouse for Aunt Roz, a pleated skirt and two blouses for me: one to replace the one Crispin had, as he said, befouled, and the other to match the new skirt I bought. Christopher refrained from indulging himself in front of his mother, but I could tell he admired a lovely cloche hat with a cluster of felt violets pinned to the brim. It would certainly bring out the blue of his eyes, so I threw it in with my other purchases, and had the dubious pleasure of having Aunt Roz tell me, “The green would look better with your complexion, Pippa, dear.”
When we gathered back at the Hispano-Suiza with our purchases, Crispin was sullen and silent, which led me to believe that he might have gotten a talking-to from his mother during our absence. He handed her into the front seat with less than his usual overblown charm, and let Christopher deal with getting Aunt Roz and me situated in the backseat. Not a single “Darling,” fell from his lips on the entire drive back, which made me wonder whether Aunt Charlotte had finally managed to impress upon him the impertinence of his addressing me thusly, even if it was, in actuality, my name. We all knew that Crispin did it because he thought it was funny to make me squirm.
Although Aunt Charlotte probably didn’t care at all about what did or didn’t make me squirm, so it was more likely that she had reproached her only son for having had too much to drink last night, and for insisting on making a nuisance of himself this morning.
Either way, he clearly didn’t appreciate it, whatever form the chastisement had taken, and the drive home was even less pleasant than the one to Salisbury. I spent it hanging onto the door on my side of the Hispano-Suiza so I wouldn’t accidentally get thrown out of the motorcar on one of the turns, and die.
Back at the Hall, we gathered in the library to wait for luncheon to be served. Aunt Charlotte excused herself to carry her parcels to the back of the house, while Aunt Roz and I loaded up one of the footmen with our packages, and asked him to convey them to our rooms. Christopher’s cloche, by necessity, ended up going to my room, of course.
Crispin, who had bought nothing and had nowhere else to be, threw himself into a chair with a sulky expression, and kicked his legs out.
“Why so glum, St George?” I asked. “Did your mother tell you that you’re not allowed to call me Darling anymore?”
He looked at me. “As a matter of fact she did—” He waited a long, breathless moment before he curled his tongue around my name, “Pippa.”
Each P was pronounced with deliberation. I winced.
“Please,” I had to take a breath in order to force the word out, “Crispin—”
And that was as far as I got, because my face literally puckered around the taste. He knew it, too, because his lips twitched, while Christopher let out a laugh.
“Don’t make her do it, St George. You can tell it’s literally painful.”
“That seems to me to be an excellent reason for making her do it,” Crispin said piously, but he relented with a smirk. “Yes, yes, Darling. I know it hurts. You can continue to call me St George, and I’ll keep calling you Darling. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” I said, because anything was better than having to use his first name. Forcing my mouth to shape the syllables had made me feel like I was sucking on a lime. “Just perhaps be a little more careful when your mother’s around? You don’t want to give her the wrong idea.”
“No, we wouldn’t want that,” Crispin nodded pleasantly. “I’ll endeavor not to sound like I’m flirting when my mother’s apt to hear, Darling.”
“Oh, is that what you think you’re doing?” Because there was certainly nothing flirtatious about that last sentence.
“Of course.” He sounded surprised that I’d even question it. “You’re the light of my life, Darling. I thought you knew that.”
“Funny way you have of showing it,” I said, and rolled my eyes. Crispin smirked and opened his mouth for another volley, but—
“I wonder how the police did on their room search this morning?” Christopher mused, probably in an effort to change the subject. What it did, was cause Crispin to abandon me in favor of Christopher, and make Aunt Roz take an interest in the conversation, which she had hitherto watched with mild amusement.
