“I was merely curious why you hadn’t mentioned it to me,” Crispin told her, although none of us needed an answer to that, as the reason was obvious: Laetitia had been worried that Crispin was the father of Cecily’s baby, and if so, that she wouldn’t get to keep him.
And it seemed as if she had decided to keep him, as well as herself, in ignorance, rather than face the issue head on.
“I didn’t go near Cecily last night, old chap,” Geoffrey offered. “We danced one dance, but that was it, and it was in front of everybody. Violet hung on my arm the rest of the time. She even stood at her door and watched me walk to the top of the stairs when I took her upstairs at the end of the night. It would have been as much as my life’s worth to make a detour, I reckon.”
He smirked.
“So we heard,” Crispin said, with a flicker of a look at Olivia. She stared back, belligerent.
“I told you. We knew that one of you was responsible, and we were worried that something would happen. Cecily said that the chap, whoever he was, wouldn’t be happy.”
The glare she leveled at the four men was fulminating.
“Not it,” Reggie said again, his hands up in the universal signal of surrender. “You know I’m not, Livvy. I was with you all night. I couldn’t have done anything to Cecily.”
“But you brought Dom,” Olivia said bitterly. “Him and his paraphernalia.”
Reggie shook his head. “I only motored down with him, Liv. It wasn’t me who invited him. That was St George’s doing.”
“I may have made the suggestion,” Crispin said, “but the formal invitation came from someone else. And I certainly didn’t ask him to bring anything for Cecily.”
He waited a moment before he added, “I spent the evening with Laetitia. All of you watched me. The only time I spoke to Cecily was when she made her felicitations when she and Violet arrived. I did make it to her room by the end of the night, but that was the first I heard about the pregnancy.”
In the silence that followed that pronouncement, we could hear Laetitia whimper softly while her mother cooed and shot daggers at Crispin.
“Bilge was with me all night,” Serena said. “He danced with Cecily once, but unless she died of trampled toes, he’s not to blame.” She smirked, and then added, more seriously, “Neither of us went near the kitchen for any cup of tea.”
“Whoever did that,” Bilge added, showing a modicum of intelligence for the first time this weekend, “must have done Violet, too. That couldn’t have been us, either. We weren’t at her table for tea.”
And thus we were back to Reggie, Olivia, and Geoffrey. The three people who had shared Violet’s table and who had had access to Violet’s teacup.
“It was him,” Olivia said, indicating Geoffrey. “It had to be. It wasn’t me, and I’ll swear that it wasn’t Reggie. I watched him all night last night. And besides, if Crispin is right and Geoffrey took Cecily home after the Jungman sisters’ bash…”
Then he was almost certainly the father of her baby. The timing worked, and who was responsible for this weekend’s tragedy, if not the man who had taken her to bed?
“Violet watched me last night,” Geoffrey said again, stubbornly. “And we sat at the same table for tea today, Livvy. Did you see me put anything in Violet’s cup?”
She hadn’t, of course. She couldn’t admit it, so she didn’t shake her head, but she sank her teeth into her bottom lip and refused to look at him, or at anyone else. Her anger about it was practically palpable.
And that was that. We had reached an impasse. It was clear that Olivia thought Geoffrey was guilty, or at least that she wanted him to be. But even if he had seduced Cecily, or had taken advantage of her when she was sozzled, and even if her predicament had been his fault, if we couldn’t put the pennyroyal in Geoffrey’s hand, and if no one had seen that hand hovering over Cecily’s or Violet’s tea, there was no way to pin it on him.
Besides, it was still possible that Olivia was the guilty party, the way Christopher and I had posited in the drawing room, and she was simply very good at shifting suspicion away from herself.
“What we need,” I said, “is someone who had access to the tea this afternoon, and to Violet’s room, and who knew where the pennyroyal grew, and who could come and go in the kitchen, and who could give Cecily a cup of tea without raising suspicion; someone who wasn’t under scrutiny last night…”
As I spoke, everyone’s attention shifted onto Olivia. It took her a second to realize it, and then her eyes widened. She shook her head frantically. “No! I wouldn’t. They’re my best friends. I’ve lost both of my best friends today. I wouldn’t!”
“I wasn’t talking about you,” I said.
Olivia opened her mouth to ask me who I had been talking about, but before she could, footsteps on the stairs made us all turn in that direction. And at that point the question answered itself.
“Well done, Miss Darling,” Tom told me, as he descended the staircase from the first floor, with his hand wrapped aroundNellie’s upper arm. Collins walked on the other side of her, his face impassive. “Means and opportunity before motive.”
“Motive still matters, though,” I answered, with my eyes on the maid. She looked as put-together and lovely as always, with not a hair out of place under her cap. “I know she could have done it. She’s the maid, and nobody ever pays attention to the maid. What I want to know, is why.”
“Lord Geoffrey,” Tom said, as the threesome stepped off the staircase and onto the foyer floor. Perhaps he thought that that cleared it up, or perhaps he simply wanted Geoffrey’s attention. If so, he didn’t get it. Geoffrey was staring at Nellie, his eyes wide and his mouth open. I was pretty certain I could see fear flickering in his eyes.
“But I asked you,” Constance burst out. “I asked you whether Geoffrey had been a bother.”
