He looked into the air for a moment before he recalled himself to the task at hand, “—but analysis of the stomach content showed that such may have been the case.”
“That’s terrible,” I said warmly. “It must be very difficult for you. I know you were the Sutherland family doctor for a long time.”
“Many years.” He wandered to the cabinet by the wall for the supplies he’d need for the next part of the process.
“And your father before you, I hear.”
He nodded. “Many years.”
“Aunt Charlotte—the new Duchess of Sutherland—said that you were the one who delivered Crispin when he was born twenty-three years ago.”
“Indeed.” He turned, hands full of gauze and bandages, and more lively now that he had been reminded of something he had done right. “Lady Charlotte—Her Grace now—went into labor several weeks earlier than expected. We were all very worried that there would be something wrong with the baby.”
I weighed the (clearly God-given) opportunity to point out all the things that were wrong with Crispin, but since he wasn’t present to hear them, I decided there was no reason to exert myself. Of course, I still gave myself a mental pat on the back for having the strength to abstain.
Instead, I asked, “You mean Crispin was—” I made quotation marks in the air, “premature?”
In case you’re unaware of the connotations, ‘premature’ in a certain tone of voice is a euphemism for a baby born seven or eight months after a wedding, when the family doesn’t want there to be any question about the baby’s legitimacy or the fact that its parents were legally wed when it was conceived. It’s code for two people having created a baby outside of wedlock, but lying about it when the baby’s born.
But the doctor shook his head. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. Lady Charlotte and Lord Harold—His and Her Grace—had been married for several years by the time young Crispin came along. In fact, they’d been married for long enough that there had been some speculation about an issue on his or her part. It’s usually her part, of course, at least according to the husband’s family, but in this case I rather fancy…”
He trailed off again, before he recalled himself. “At any rate, there was no question about the baby being the legitimate offspring of the Duke and Duchess. He’s very clearly a Sutherland down to his bones.”
Yes, he was. He had his mother’s hair and eyes, but Crispin’s face was all Sutherland, from the pointed chin and high cheekbones to the exaggerated cupid’s bow of his mouth.
“So there was nothing unusual about it?”
The doctor looked up from where he was winding bandages around my arm. “What do you mean, unusual?”
Well… what I meant was something unusual in the sense that it would have caught Grimsby’s attention enough to have him make a note of it in his blackmail log. But of course I couldn’t say that. It wouldn’t make sense, for one thing, and for another, we probably wanted to keep Grimsby’s blackmail attempts secret.
So I said, “Nothing in particular. Just… unusual.”
“No,” Doctor Meadows said. “Not aside from the fact that he came about three weeks earlier than he should have. Lady Charlotte went into labor on a Friday afternoon. The baby was born by late evening. It didn’t take long. Being premature, he was small.”
“Of course. So nothing unusual happened?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.” Doctor Meadows fastened the last of the bandage. “There you are. Good as new.”
Not quite that, but at least good enough to go on with. “How much do I owe you?”
“I’ll settle the bill with the Hall,” Doctor Meadows said.
“I don’t live at Sutherland Hall full time.”
“If the Hall has a problem, I’ll contact Lady Roslyn,” Doctor Meadows said.
There didn’t seem any point in arguing, so I thanked him and put my blouse and jacket back on before I went out to the waiting room where Christopher, as it turned out, was pacing. When I came through the door, he stopped, turned, and stared. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “It was really not a very big wound.”
“It bled a lot.”
It had bled a lot. “The doctor said it should heal just fine. You’ll have to carry my bag when we go back to London, though. I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy for the next week, to keep it from opening back up.”
“Hopefully we’ll be back in London sometime in the next week,” Christopher said grimly.
“I’m sure we will be. You said it yourself. How long can it take to determine who of a fairly small group of people committed two murders?”
