“After this afternoon, I’m more worried about being murdered before I can get there,” Christopher said.
Ah. Yes, that was a consideration now. Or had become one.
“Did you call for one of the motorcars to pick us up?”
Christopher nodded. “Someone should be here shortly.”
“Who did you speak to? Did you tell whoever it was what had happened?”
“It was Tidwell,” Christopher said, “and I didn’t. I asked him to fetch Tom Gardiner to the phone, and I toldhimwhat had happened.”
Wonderful. “Hopefully he’ll have the rifle found and the shooter apprehended before we get back up there.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Christopher said. He was remarkably grim this afternoon, but then it isn’t every day someone takes potshots at us. “Whoever is doing all this, has gotten away with it so far.”
True. “Let’s go outside and wait.” I took his arm and led him towards the door. “It smells like antiseptic in here.”
And blood, although that might have been in my imagination. My arm smarted, and by now the events of earlier had caught up with me, too, and I had realized just how close I’d come to a much more serious injury.
Not to mention the possibility of a fatal one, although there are quite a few inches between the outer edge of my arm and the middle of my chest, or for that matter my forehead. So maybe whoever it was hadn’t meant to fatally injure. Perhaps it had just been a warning. Albeit for what, I had no idea.
“Have you been doing anything you haven’t told me about?” Christopher asked when I floated this idea past him. He squinted suspiciously at me when he asked. It could have been the bright afternoon sun on the High Street, but more likely it was his state of mind.
I shook my head. “Truly not. You know everything I’ve done since I got here.”
“Then I can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to kill you. You don’t know who the murderer is, do you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’ve thought about it, of course.”
I nodded. “Of course. Haven’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Who do you think it is?”
“I can’t imagine,” Christopher said. And added, pensively, “Or I don’t want to.”
I nodded, since I could understand that. “I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, if you’d like. If you promise you won’t get upset.”
He squinted at me. “If there’s something you think I might be upset about, perhaps it would be better if you didn’t tell me?”
“I imagine it would be hard for you not to be upset,” I said honestly. “They’re all your relatives. Every last one of them.”
“And Grandfather was my family, too, even if I didn’t like him very much. It was fine for as long we thought he had died a natural death. When no one had to be guilty of his murder. Now…” He shook his head. “Are you sure it couldn’t be one of the servants?”
“Of course I’m not sure,” I said, shading my eyes with my good hand. I thought I had seen the sun glint off a piece of metal up the road, but when I looked, there was no motorcar coming. “From what Tom said, all the maids and footmen are alibied, but it could have been Tidwell or Mrs. Mason or Cook or, I assume, Wilkins, or maybe one of the grooms…”
Christopher nodded. “But?”
“But I wouldn’t know about them. I’ve been thinking about the above-stairs.”
He huffed out a breath. “Fine. Tell me.”
“Well, of all of us, you have a pretty good motive for killing Grimsby, but as far as I know, you had no motive whatsoever for killing your grandfather. Of course, it’s possible they’re wrong and he wasn’t murdered…”
“Did the doctor say that?”
