“Better hurry,” Christopher muttered, “or we’ll miss it.”
I nodded. I had spent all day racking my brain to try to determine what had happened and who was guilty, and I was not about to miss the big denouement now. “Let’s go.”
We went, and stood not upon the order of our going. My heelsclick-clackedrapidly down the marble floors of the corridor, past the doors to the library and the study, and into the open foyer.
Most of the others seemed to be gathered there, watching the spectacle that was taking place in the middle of the floor. Uncle Herbert had joined Aunt Roz, Francis, and Constance when Tom had let the uncles go earlier, and now the four of them were standing at the foot of the curving staircase. Aunt Roz seemed interested in the proceedings, her eyes big and bright as they moved from person to person, while Constance looked a bit concerned. She was holding on to Francis’s arm, perhaps so he wouldn’t be tempted to throw himself into the fray.
I looked around for Wolfgang, and saw him standing by himself on the other side of the foyer beside the front door. No need to worry about their animosity being the cause of any of this, then.
Uncle Harold had joined his future daughter-in-law and her parents, beside the entrance to the hallway on the opposite side of the foyer from where Christopher and I had emerged. He looked put out but not actively angry, and the Marsdens seemedmore confused than anything else. The Earl had a vague sort of smile on his face, while Lady Euphemia was looking from her daughter’s betrothed to her son with a worried wrinkle between her brows. Laetitia was watching Crispin with the unblinking stare of a snake trying to hypnotize its prey.
Or perhaps it wasn’t Crispin she was trying to hypnotize. Perhaps it was Olivia Barnsley. He was facing off with her in the middle of the foyer floor, and he wasn’t the only one. He had his future brother-in-law beside him, while the Honorable Reggie was standing on Geoffrey’s other side, wide-eyed and silent. Bilge Fortescue hovered a few steps behind—not quite inside the circle, but not quite outside of it, either—with Lady Serena clinging to his arm.
“—I promise you, Livvy,” Crispin said, and his voice was throbbing with sincerity; he was clearly in the middle of an impassioned defense of something or other—himself, as it turned out, “I wouldn’t. Not ever.”
I suppressed a sneer at the nickname as well as the overdone earnestness, and saw a similar expression cross Laetitia’s face. Olivia, on the other hand, didn’t seem softened at all.
“It had to be one of you,” she shrieked, as she looked from Crispin to Geoffrey to Reggie to Bilge, eyes wild. “Cecily is dead and Violet is dying! It had to be one of you!”
Reggie cleared his throat, and Olivia swung on him. “Don’t you dare, Reggie! Don’t you tell me it could be someone else!”
“I wasn’t going to, Liv.” Where her voice had been borderline hysterical, his was calm. Or at least as calm as one’s voice is likely to be when one is accused of murder in the middle of a crowd, with the police standing by to arrest the guilty party.
Unless they weren’t, of course. I looked around, but could see none of the local constables. Nor was Tom in sight, although I wouldn’t have put it past him to be standing at the top of the stairs listening, ready to swoop down and save the day when thisconfrontation ended. And I don’t mean that in a disparaging way whatsoever. I have hardly the room to complain about anyone else’s eavesdropping, do I?
“As St George said,” Reggie continued, with the faintest tremor to his voice and a glance in the latter’s direction, “I wouldn’t. And you know that I didn’t, Liv. I couldn’t have. You’ve been with me practically every second since I arrived yesterday.”
Yes, she had been. And Violet had tracked Geoffrey quite closely, as well. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed that until now.
Or rather, that I hadn’t considered what it meant.
“We wanted to make certain that you couldn’t get to her!” Olivia shouted, her face blotchy with rage. “We planned it before we came here! She wouldn’t tell us who it was?—”
Her eyes flicked from one man to the other again, and ended up back on Reggie, “—but we knew it had to be one of you!”
“Doesn’t sound like she’s ready to confess to murder,” I whispered to Christopher out of the corner of my mouth, “does it?”
He shook his head. “Clearly not.”
But if not Olivia, then who?
Olivia seemed to be thinking the same thing—if not Reggie, then who?—because she assessed Geoffrey before pinning Bilge, who was hovering uncertainly in the background, with a fulminating glare. “I haven’t forgotten you, you know!”
“Don’t, Livvy,” Serena said. Her hand was tight on her husband’s sleeve, but her voice was even. “He didn’t do it. I’ve been with him all day. I was with him all last night, as well. I know we talked about the possibility?—”
Bilge turned his head and fixed his wife with an appalled look. “You thought thatI?—?”
“Not now, Bilge,” Serena said, but I could see her fingers flex as she squeezed his arm. She added, calmly, “We weren’t even atyour table for tea, Livvy. Neither of us had the opportunity to put anything in Violet’s cup. The only ones who did?—”
She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to, because Olivia’s head swung back to Reggie and to Geoffrey, the only two of them who had been at her and Violet’s table. I could practically see her tongue flick out to taste-test their guilt.
Reggie raised his hands. “I promise, Liv. I didn’t do it. I would never hurt Violet, and I never had anything to do with Cecily.”
Olivia stared at him, so intently that she appeared to be trying to look inside him. Whatever she found there, seemed to be enough to allow her to dismiss him after a final probing glance. Reggie deflated a bit, or at least his shoulders sank a millimeter or two once her attention was off him.
“You,” she said to Geoffrey, vicious as a viper.
He shook his head even as he gave her the sort of fatuous smile one might give to something very young and quite cute, not to be taken seriously. The equivalent of a patronizing pat on the head. “Now, Livvy…”
