Or perhaps he’d gone upstairs, tossed all his belongings into his bag, and high-tailed it down to the garage, before anyone more official than me could start asking him questions.
“You didn’t notice a motorcar leaving the manor,” I asked Christopher, “did you?”
He shook his head. “One didn’t pass us, certainly. Do you think he did a bunk?”
“He seemed fairly spooked when I spoke to him about Cecily. There’s a prison sentence for providing someone with an abortifacient, did you know that?”
“The question has never come up,” Christopher said dryly. “I’ll just try his door, shall I? If all his possessions are gone, then we’ll know he’s scarpered, and perhaps the London police can intercept him when he gets home.”
He didn’t wait for Collins to give him the go-ahead, just left the doorway of Cecily’s room and started across the landing.
“That’s Wolfgang’s room,” I told him, when he approached the door on the other side of the lavatory from mine. “Theirs is the next one.”
Christopher nodded and applied his knuckles to the wood. “Rivers, old boy? Are you in there?”
There was no response, and he knocked again. When he reached for the doorknob, I told him, “Wait!”
He glanced at me. “Are you still worried about the sap from the pennyroyal?”
“Not this time. Although it wouldn’t hurt for you to go into the lavatory and rinse it off. But mostly I don’t want you to touch the doorknob.”
Understanding crossed his countenance, and he took a step back. “I’ll just do that, shall I? It’s all yours, Constable Collins.”
He exchanged glances with Collins, who had come into the doorway to see what was going on, and headed for the lavatory door. A few seconds later, I heard the water turn on and then splashing as Christopher washed his hands.
Collins, meanwhile, gave me a look before he moved past me with an murmured apology and approached the door to the young men’s room.
A third knock on the door had no more effect than the first two times Christopher had knocked—or for that matter the time when Collins himself had done it. The constable put his ear to the door. “Mr. Rivers? This is Constable Collins. If you’re in there, can you call out?”
I didn’t hear a response, and Collins mustn’t have, either, because after a moment he took a step back and eyed the door. By now, Christopher had come out of the lavatory, too, shaking the last of the water off his now clean hands, and stopped beside me. “Nothing?”
“Doesn’t seem so,” I said grimly. Collins pulled a handkerchief out of the pocket of his uniform jacket and draped it over his hand.
“Mr. Rivers?” he called one last time. “I’m coming in.”
He waited a second or two, and then reached out and grabbed the knob.
At this point, there were only two options, and we had all, surely, calculated them in our heads. One: Rivers had done a bunk, in which case the door would be unlocked and the room empty. Or two: he hadn’t, he was still inside, alone or with someone else, and the door would most likely be locked.
The knob turned and the door opened. I braced myself for the outraged squealing of one of the female guests, but none came.
“He’s likely gone, then,” Christopher muttered beside me as Constable Collins pushed the door open and stepped into the doorway.
And stopped.
“What?” I asked, heart in my throat. Christopher’s hand fumbled for mine, and I grasped it and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
Collins shook his head. “Don’t come any closer.”
I didn’t listen, of course. Pulling Christopher behind me, I took the couple of steps up to the door and peered into the room over Collins’s shoulder.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Gah!”
Constable Collins flicked me a look over his shoulder. “I did tell you not to look.”
Yes, of course he had done. But I had been too curious to listen, and now I was paying for it.
