Yes, we most certainly did.
“Come and find us when you’re finished up here.”
I promised I would do, and then I settled onto the needle-pointed chair and waited for Constance to come back, with or without her Aunt Effie, and with or without the butler or housekeeper, to tell me whether or not the doctor was on his way.
The hunters returnedin the early afternoon, red-cheeked and hungry from their ordeal. By then, the doctor and local police had made their way from Marsden-on-Crane up to the manor, and the van from the local mortuary was parked at the bottom of the steps, back doors gaping open.
We saw the others come back through the window in the library, where we had settled with our drinks while we waited for luncheon to be served. The local police was upstairs processing Cecily’s room for evidence—evidence of what, I didn’t know—and the doctor was instructing the two bowler-hatted blokes from the morgue on what to do with the body.
I recognized the doctor—a small man with a bald head and a luxurious mustache—from the murder at the Dower House in May. I also recognized several of the local constables, including one named Collins, who had helped Tom Gardiner back then. Blokes in black suits and bowler hats look the same everywhere, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if they, too, were the same pair who had attended to the late Johanna de Vos.
Crispin took one look at them all, including the covered stretcher coming through the door and down the stairs and into the back of the mortuary van, and turned deathly pale.
So, in justice to her, did Lady Laetitia. Geoffrey had been out with the hunting party, of course, so she knew that he was intact, but I could see fear on her face as she ran up the steps calling for her mother and father.
Lord Maurice was in the study next door to the library, as it happened, conferring with the constable in charge, and we could hear him respond to his daughter’s call through the wall.
Crispin had more hostages to fortune here than anyone, between Christopher and Francis, Constance and myself, and all the many girls he had at one point dallied with and—I assumed—still had fond feelings for. Olivia Barnsley and Lady Violet Cummings were making their way towards the house, arm in arm, as we watched, but there were still the four of us, and of course there was Cecily. Uncle Harold, Uncle Herbert, and Aunt Roz were also expected today, and for all Crispin knew, might have arrived already.
He took the steps into the house two at a time, and raised his voice as soon as he entered the outer hall. “Kit! Where are you?”
Christopher looked at me, God knows why.
“Go on, then,” I told him. “Put him out of his misery.”
“Don’t think I don’t realize how that sounds, Pippa.” But he pushed his chair back and strode towards the door. “In here, Crispin!”
There were rapid steps outside in the hallway, and then Christopher stepped back to let Crispin into the room. The Viscount St George stopped just across the threshold and looked around, frantically. His eyes lingered for a second on each of our faces—not just making sure we were upright and breathing, but assessing all of us for state of mind as well as general health.
When he looked up and met my eyes, I began, “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” and watched the color drain out of his cheeks before I could get any further.
Francis nudged me. “Enough, Pipsqueak. You’ll make the boy faint.”
Crispin shot him a look of dislike. “It’s hardly as bad as all that. I even shot at a bird or two this morning. My father would be proud.”
When none of us responded to that—the idea that Uncle Harold had made his only son feel bad for not being bloodthirsty enough, didn’t endear His Grace to me further—Crispin added, “There was a mortuary van outside.”
“Not for any of us,” I said.
“Clearly.” He glanced around the room. “Who, then?”
“As I said, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news?—”
“Cecily Fletcher,” Christopher interrupted, and took Crispin’s elbow when the latter swayed. “Come and sit down.”
He shoved Crispin into his own chair and put his own glass of sherry in his hand. Crispin gave it a look of disgust before hetossed it back. After a moment, a little color leaked back into his cheeks. “Bloody hell.”
“I’m sorry,” Christopher said with a look at me. “But Pippa leading up to it only made it sound worse than it was. Better to rip the plaster off all at once.”
“Says you.”
Crispin glanced around the table, at Francis’s brandy—the latter gave him an arched brow and a distinct if tacit warning against trying to take it away—and Constance’s tea before landing on my sherry. I handed it over with a grimace. “Laetitia won’t like it if you get bladdered before luncheon even kicks off.”
“I won’t get bladdered from two glasses of sherry, Darling.” But he didn’t toss it back the way he had done the first one, just took a healthy swig and handed it back to me. And then he took a breath and let it out. “Cecily, you said?”
I nodded. “After you left my room last night?—”
The others eyed each other after I said this, so perhaps I hadn’t been specific enough about it earlier, although now certainly wasn’t the right time to clarify anything, “—I ran into Cecily in the loo. She was sick to her stomach, the poor thing.”
