Aunt Roz waved a negligent hand. “Off somewhere with Francis. What on earth has been going on here to get him into such a state, Pippa?”
The real reason for the state, as far as I knew, was standing a few feet away. Wolfgang had been speaking to Aunt Roz when I came running through the door—or perhaps it had been vice versa—but he had removed himself to a polite distance when I had stumbled into my aunt’s arms and stayed there. Now he cleared his throat, but didn’t actually say anything.
I didn’t, either. Not about that. “We’ve had two murders today,” I told Aunt Roz instead, “and someone shot at us this morning.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Again?”
Wolfgang arched his brows in surprise, and now that I thought about it, I realized that I hadn’t mentioned that previous incident to him. It had been the least exciting part of that particular weekend, and to be honest, I had mostly forgotten about it. The scar on my arm was still there, but fading, and I really only thought about it when I was putting on a sleeveless gown and happened to glance in the mirror and notice it.
“I have no idea who they were trying to take out,” I told Aunt Roz, “and that’s if it wasn’t just an accidental shot from someone going for a partridge in the woods. I’m sure they were warned not to shoot in the direction of the house?—”
Wolfgang nodded.
“—but it’s easy to lose a sense of direction in the woods. The bullet didn’t hit any of us. But Constable Collins collected it andput it with the rest of the evidence. Just in case it turns out to be relevant.”
Aunt Roz tilted her head. “Why would it have anything to do with the other matter?”
“Pippa looks a bit like Cecily Fletcher did,” Christopher explained, and Aunt Roz’s eyebrows rose. For some reason, she glanced over at Uncle Harold and Crispin. Uncle Harold had stopped haranguing his son, and was standing over him looking stern. Crispin still looked sulky, more like the thwarted eleven-year-old I remembered than a man ready to get married.
“We thought that someone might have believed the poison had failed,” Christopher said, “and that person decided to take a more active approach in getting rid of her.”
“But it wasn’t her at all.”
Christopher and I both shook our heads. “She was lying upstairs with Constance,” I said, “and I was the one on the lawn. But I suppose, if someone was in the trees and not able to see very well, it might have been an easy mistake to make.”
Aunt Roz nodded. “You’re all right, at any rate—all four of you—and I’m certain the police will get to the bottom of it.”
I hoped so. I didn’t really think that anyone was out to get me—not this time—but the bullet had still come uncomfortably close. And you’re just as dead either way, aren’t you? Whether it’s a case of mistaken identity or not, doesn’t matter to the final outcome.
Wolfgang cleared his throat. “Are you all right, Philippa?”
“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just another dead body.”
He nodded. “The youngPolizistcame down and told us. It was the drug dealer,nein?”
“Ja,” I said. “I mean, yes. It was. Dominic Rivers. Someone conked him over the head with a vase.”
Wolfgang’s face twitched. “Barbaric.”
What had happened to Cecily was a lot more barbaric, but it wasn’t a quarrel I wanted to have. They were both dead, and most likely by the same hand, so whoever had done it, was certainly a horrible person either way.
“You stayed in the dining room after I left,” I said, and Wolfgang nodded.
“For a short time. The gathering broke up quickly.”
Of course. First Christopher had gone to confer with Constable Collins, then Crispin had swept out in a fury, and then I had left and taken Dom Rivers with me. Any and all of those things would have been cause for curiosity, and I could well imagine how some people would have wanted to put their heads together to gossip, while others would have wanted to go off on their own to lick their wounds.
Case in point— “What happened to Laetitia?”
“Our hostess? She left shortly after you did.”
Looking for Crispin, no doubt. I hadn’t seen her while I’d been standing in the foyer with Rivers, so perhaps she had taken the servants’ staircase up to the first floor—up to Crispin’s bedchamber—and instead, he had been on the lawn with Christopher and Constable Collins.
Or perhaps she had waited out of sight until Rivers and I had parted ways, and then she had followed him up to his room and whacked him over the head because?—
Well, no. That didn’t make any sense. If Laetitia had poisoned Cecily with pennyroyal, she would have picked the pennyroyal herself. Christopher and I had proven that she could have done so. So she would have had no reason to murder Rivers.
Unless she had gotten the pennyroyal from Rivers, and someone else had picked the plant and made the tea.
