It smarted quite a bit, to be honest, and bled more than I liked, but I didn’t think I was in any danger of succumbing to the vapors between here and the village. It was my arm that had been hit, not my leg, which made everything easier. I’d had childhood injuries—scraped knees and the like—that had been almost as bad as this. “We could try to wrap it with something, I suppose.”
“I’m fresh out of bandages,” Christopher said, and reached for his collar, “but I’ll sacrifice my tie, if that’ll suit.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. And you have a clean handkerchief, I’m sure.”
“Naturally.” He whipped it out, fashioned it into a pad, and wrapped the tie around my upper arm twice to hold the folded square of cotton in place. “It would be easier without the jacket, but since we still have a bit of walking to do, it’ll be better if you keep it on.”
I nodded. “Let’s follow the ditch for a while before we climb back up on the road. I don’t fancy another bullet, to the chest this time.”
“Suits me,” Christopher said. “I’m dressed for it.”
He was, in plus fours and sturdy walking shoes. I was a bit less so, but I managed to muddle along just fine until the road began to descend and we were no longer in the direct line of fire from the Hall. At that point, Christopher boosted me back up onto the road, and we descended into the village in the approved way.
I kept an ear out for the sound of an engine from behind us, in the event someone from the Hall—the shooter, or someone else—had decided to take one of the motorcars out to see what the shot was about. But we made it all the way into Little Sutherland without being overtaken by anyone, and Christopher nudged me down the High Street to the right. “The doctor is this way, if I recall.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“To the village, many times. To the infirmary, once that I can recall.” He led me along the street with my (good) arm in a gentle grip. “I broke my arm when I was seven or eight, falling out of one of the apple trees in the orchard. We were playing Robin Hood, as I recall, and the Sheriff of Nottingham was throwing these hard, little winter apples at me. It was before your time.”
“Let me guess. St George was the Sheriff of Nottingham and it was his fault?”
“Obviously,” Christopher said. “We played together rather a lot before you came along.”
“Poor Crispin.” Who had lost his playmate on my arrival.
“Poor me, rather. It was my arm that broke.” Christopher shot me a look. “Why is it that you can say his name to me but you can’t bear to say it to him?”
I shrugged, and immediately regretted it when my arm throbbed. “Too familiar, I suppose. He seems to have a problem wrapping his tongue around mine, too. At least without making a mockery of it.”
Christopher made a face.
“And I don’t use it often,” I added. “I’ve been calling him St George for years, long before it became his title, just so I could avoid using his first name. But I think…”
I hesitated. But then Christopher gave me an encouraging nod, so I continued. “I think, after this weekend—between the information in the dossier, and that fight with his father we overheard, and what happened over luncheon, and now what you told me about growing up together—I feel bad for him. So it’s easier to think of him as a poor little boy and use his first name.”
“He’d hate that,” Christopher said, which was undoubtedly true, and came to a halt outside one of the many pretty little stone cottages that lined the High Street. “Here we are.” He indicated the bright red door of the village surgery. “Are you ready?”
“The sooner, the better,” I answered. “This wound isn’t going to suture itself.”
“I suppose not.” Christopher knocked, and then turned the knob. The door opened into a dim waiting room. He nudged me over the threshold and followed me in, shutting the door behind us.
SEVENTEEN
Five minutes later,I was stripped to just my skirt and camisole, sitting in the doctor’s surgery while he treated the wound on my arm. Christopher was left to cool his heels in the waiting room, not because he hadn’t seen me in my camisole before, but because we didn’t want to shock the doctor unduly by insisting that he be let in. Doctor Meadows was already concerned enough over the wound itself. “And you say you think it was a bullet?” he asked worriedly as he wiped at it.
“I’m fairly certain it was a bullet,” I answered. “We heard what sounded like a shot, and then something slapped my arm. Doesn’t it look like a bullet wound?”
I peered down at it, and felt my head swim, so I looked away again.
“It looks like something came close enough to gouge a furrow through your upper arm,” the doctor said. “It could very well have been a bullet.”
He finished cleaning it—I unclenched my teeth—and began applying salve to it. After the initial sting, the liniment spread a soothing kind of coolness across the wound.
“Quite a lot of things going on up at the Hall this weekend,” Doctor Meadows commented.
“Quite a lot,” I agreed. “Grimsby’s murder, of course, and I suppose you heard that Scotland Yard suspects the old duke may have been killed, too?”
I wasn’t trying to rub salt in the wound—pun totally intended—by bringing up Doctor Meadows’s failure to accurately diagnose the late duke’s cause of death, but a shadow crossed his face nonetheless. “I did hear that that might be the case. Doctor Curtis, the police surgeon, did the autopsy yesterday evening, while I was present—he was my patient, after all—and it looks like it might have been an overdose of his heart medication. Of course, the results of that are indistinguishable from any other heart event…”
