It was I who killed your grandfather and Simon Grimsby. They had discovered my secret—
“For her son,” Finchley said.
I nodded.
“Is that her handwriting?”
I glanced at him. “As far as I can tell. I don’t have much occasion to see it.” She certainly didn’t send me little love notes. “Although from the Christmas cards I can remember… it looks like it.”
“I’m sure her husband and her son can confirm it.”
No doubt. “Go get your fingerprint paraphernalia, would you? I’m sure St George would like to read his letter sooner rather than later.”
Actually, I wasn’t sure about that at all. Crispin didn’t look like he was aware of much of anything right now. But there was no sense in dilly-dallying. If Finchley was going to dust the paper for fingerprints, he might as well get on with it.
“Make sure no one touches it,” he told me. I nodded, although by then he already had his back to me and was moving across the floor towards the door with long strides.
Aunt Roz, meanwhile, drifted my way. “Poor Crispin,” she said softly. “It looks like she did it herself, doesn’t it?”
From the half-full waterglass and the small, empty vial on the night table, to this letter addressed to her best-loved, yes. It looked exactly like that.
Aunt Roz sank her teeth into her bottom lip. “Why on earth would Charlotte do away with herself?”
The obvious reason was that she had killed Duke Henry and his valet, but I didn’t feel like I ought to put it quite that bluntly. Not out loud and in front of everyone, at any rate. And not now.
“That’s for the police to determine,” I said instead, “I imagine.”
Aunt Roz nodded, still worrying her lip.
Over by the bed, Pendennis had taken charge, and was bending over to peer at the vial on the night table, hands behind his back. “Veronal,” he read.
Aunt Roz made a startled sort of movement. I glanced at her, and she made a face. “Francis,” she whispered.
“That’s what Francis takes? Veronal?”
It was a sleeping medicine, wasn’t it? Almost a hypnotic? Quite easy to overdose on, and Agatha Christie’s story,Who Killed Ackroyd?had made liberal use of it when it was serialized in the London Evening News last summer, as I recalled. One of the characters in the story, Mrs. Ferrars, used Veronal to kill both herself and her husband.
I wondered whether Aunt Charlotte had taken the London Evening News.
I also wondered, for just a moment, about Francis, until I told myself that Aunt Charlotte had left a note in her own hand, and she wouldn’t have lied for Francis.
No, it was far more likely that she had gotten hold of some of his Veronal without his knowledge. He’d been sick enough yesterday that practically anything could have happened in his room and he wouldn’t have been aware. And if he had noticed her coming in, all she’d have had to say was that she was worried about his health and making sure he was all right. He’d have no reason to doubt that, as Christopher and I had done the same thing, and so had Aunt Roz.
I turned back to the note, surreptitiously, to see whether I could manage to read another line or two, but a clatter outside the door heralded the return of Detective Sergeant Finchley and his fingerprint powder. Aunt Roz stepped aside, back to her husband and brother-in-law, while I moved back a step, only far enough to get out of Finchley’s way as he, dressed in rubber gloves now, dusted fingerprint powder over the front and then the back of the sheet of paper.
“Single set,” he announced. “Small. Looks like Her Grace’s.”
Pendennis nodded and snatched the piece of paper off the table. “Vial next,” he told Finchley, “and waterglass. Meanwhile—”
He stalked over to the bed, and Crispin. “Lord St George.”
Crispin blinked, but reached out. And stared at the heading of the letter in his mother’s handwriting for several seconds before he began reading. His face had a blank sort of look, an emptiness that I remembered from losing my own parents. Christopher gave him a worried look, and then dropped his own eyes to the letter, as well.
They both read for a moment, and then Crispin’s hand clenched around the paper. I was standing close enough to hear his indrawn breath. He let it out again, deliberately, and handed the letter across the bed, to Tom. “You’d better have this.”
Tom nodded. “We’ll get it back to you.”
The sound Crispin made sounded like it was half laughter, half tears, all of it wrenched out of him by force. I didn’t even like him—actively abhorred him a lot of the time—and I felt my heart break at the level of emotion he was trying to contain.
