Uncle Harold shook his head without so much as looking in her direction. “There you are,” he said, which was quite a lot like pointing out the obvious. And Crispin must have thought so, too, because he inclined his head with all of his customary attitude.
“Here I am. May I ask what’s wrong, Father?”
“It’s your mother,” Uncle Harold said, without any effort to soften the blow. “I think she’s dead.”
TWENTY-ONE
Crispin staggered.It’s hard to do while sitting down, but he managed. And I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either, because Christopher scooted his chair a bit closer and actually put his shoulder against Crispin’s upper arm to keep him steady.
“Dead?” Aunt Roz managed. She had gone pale, too, but not to the degree that Crispin had. If I hadn’t known he was very much alive, I would have thought he was a ghost. The usually faint circles under his eyes stood out against his pale skin like bruises.
Uncle Harold nodded, looking around distractedly. “We need the police.”
“I’ll get them,” I said, since everyone else was busy: Christopher with his cousin and Uncle Roz with Uncle Harold.
Uncle Herbert gave me a distracted nod, and I jumped up from the chair and ran out of the room and down the hall to the breakfast room, heels clicking rapid-fire against the marble. “Tom! Inspector Pendennis! Detective Finchley!”
By the time I had the Scotland Yard detectives following behind me like a row of ducklings, the rest of the family was on its way up the stairs. Or rather, Crispin was almost at the top, taking the stairs two at a time, while Christopher scrambled after, a few steps behind. The older generation, meanwhile, was at the bottom, starting up. I abandoned the detectives and took off, pushing past my aunt and uncles with a breathless, “Pardon me.”
I was overtaken before I reached the top by Tom and Detective Sergeant Finchley, both of whom had much longer legs than mine, and no heels on their shoes.
By the time I made it off the staircase and could see the end of the central wing, the door to Aunt Charlotte’s room stood wide open. Crispin had disappeared into his mother’s bedroom, and Christopher was just about to do the same. Tom and Finchley were halfway down the hall past the Duke’s Chamber, feet thudding on the carpet.
In the few seconds it took me to reach the door to Aunt Charlotte’s room, Crispin had crossed the floor to the side of his mother’s bed, and Christopher had joined him there. They had their backs to me, but I could see quite clearly the rigidity of Crispin’s shoulders.
Tom and Finchley quickly made their way to the other side of the bed. “Don’t touch anything,” Finchley warned.
I stepped across the carpeted floor as quietly as I could in the presence of death. Because yes, it was very clear that Aunt Charlotte had left us. I had no idea how Uncle Harold could have made it sound like there was any doubt.
She was lying in bed as peacefully as a doll, with her nightgown buttoned to the neck, the counterpane tucked under her arms, and her hands folded across her chest. Her silvery curls framed her face like a fluffy nest. Her eyes were closed and her face smooth and peaceful. There were no signs I could see of foul play. It looked as if she had simply fallen asleep and then not woken up again.
Very much the same way the late duke had looked two days ago when we’d stood in front of his bed, in fact. So that wasn’t necessarily an indication that she hadn’t been murdered.
There was absolutely no way I could fit this murder, if it was one, into my theory that Crispin was the murderer, though. While I could think of reasons for him to have killed almost anyone else, I couldn’t make sense of him killing his mother. Certainly not with the way he was looking down at her now, with his eyes wet and his lips trembling.
Looking at him was painful, so I focused on the rest of the room instead, while my thoughts, once again, click-clacked down the track they had derailed themselves onto in the dining room.
Aunt Charlotte had slept alone. I had already known that, but the information was borne in on me again as I glanced around her bedchamber. Everything in here was feminine, from the pale-blue-and-cream damask wallpaper and matching carpet, to the spindly rococo-style escritoire with its gilded legs over by the wall.
The writing surface was down, and what looked like a sheet of paper lay in the middle of it. I wandered that way, while over by the bed, Christopher reached out and put a supportive hand on Crispin’s shoulder. From the back, the two of them looked like twins: identical in everything but dress, save for Crispin’s slightly lighter hair.
For a second I thought he might shrug off Christopher’s attempt to comfort, because he stiffened visibly when Christopher’s hand landed on his shoulder, but then he made an equally visible effort to relax.
I turned back to the escritoire.
There was indeed a note in the middle of the writing surface, and I scanned the first couple of lines rapidly.
My darling boy,it began. If I am still alive when you find this, do not try to revive me.
“There’s what looks like a letter over here,” I announced, to nobody in particular.
Under normal circumstances I might have picked it up and handed it to someone, but these were not normal circumstances. As evidenced by Finchley’s immediate cry of, “Don’t touch it!”
“I wasn’t planning to,” I told him. “I think we’ve all learned better than to touch things by now.”
He flushed—his skin was as fair as Christopher’s—but he didn’t say anything, just came to stand beside me.
Meanwhile, I read another line or two.
