“How could you have done?” Constance wanted to know. “You knew that she was expecting. It wasn’t unreasonable that she would be sick. And it’s not as if we go around expecting people to have been poisoned, even after the last few months.”
No, I supposed not. “I’m not saying I could have known, or should have. I just feel bad that I didn’t do more. But it simply didn’t cross my mind that anything extraordinary was wrong. I knew she was expecting, so the vomiting made sense. She told me that she had had peppermint tea, and it smelled more like spearmint, but even that wasn’t enough to make me wonder.”
“No, of course not,” Constance said. “Why would it? I would have thought it was a simple misnomer, as I’m sure you did.”
I nodded. “Spearmint or peppermint seemed like a minor distinction then.”
“It’s a minor distinction now,” Constance said. After a second’s pause, she added, “I understand how you feel, Pippa. I felt the same way when Johanna was murdered. Not that you disliked Miss Fletcher the way I did Johanna. But I felt as if I should have prevented it somehow. As if there was something I could have done to make a difference.”
“There wasn’t,” I said. “I was there, and there wasn’t anything you could have done differently.”
“Well, I don’t think there was anything you could have done differently, either. By the time you saw Cecily, she was already ill. The poison had already affected her, and I don’t think there was anything anyone could have done after that. She was alreadytrying to dispel it on her own, after all—or her body was—so even pumping her stomach at that point wouldn’t have helped. Even if she had told you that something out of the ordinary was going on, I think it was too late by then.”
We sat in silence a moment while I chewed on her words.
She was right, of course, but it had taken me until now to realize it.
The truth was, I hadn’t liked Cecily much. Hadn’t known her well, of course, but what little I did know, I didn’t like. She had bothered Christopher in the past, and had gone to bed with Crispin; what was there to like?
But because I hadn’t liked her, I had felt guilty over her death. As if there was something I should have done that I hadn’t, out of dislike. But the truth was that after she had stumbled into the lavatory and dropped to her knees in front of the commode, she had simply been a sick young woman who needed help. I hadn’t held anything in her past against her.
If I had had any inkling of what was going on, or had thought of anything I could have done differently, I would have done it. I felt bad that I hadn’t caught on sooner, but Constance was right: the clues really hadn’t been there. Saving her hadn’t been in my power, and I hadn’t failed.
“Thank you,” I said.
She squeezed my hand once before letting go. “I should go and see if I can find Francis.”
“Aunt Roz said Uncle Herbert took him off somewhere,” I said.
Constance nodded. “He and your German friend almost came to blows. Your aunt and uncle arrived, and broke it up. Herbert took Francis away, and Roslyn latched onto your friend. I came up here to wait for things to settle down, since everyone was staring at me.”
“Christopher went to look for his father and brother when we arrived downstairs,” I said, “so I think I’ll just go up to my room for a few minutes and freshen up.”
Constance got to her feet and smoothed her skirt down. “I’ll see you downstairs later?”
“I’ll get out of these clothes and into something else,” I said, “and then I’ll be down. Won’t take me but a few minutes.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
I shook my head. “You go ahead and find Francis. If you see Christopher, tell him I’m on my way.”
Constance said she would do, and then we parted ways: Constance down the main staircase to the ground floor and me up the smaller stairs to the second floor.
In complete honesty,I should perhaps confess that I did have an ulterior motive for wanting to go upstairs. Yes, I had worn the same clothes since I got up this morning. I had crawled across the lawn in them after being shot at, and I had found two different dead bodies wearing this skirt and blouse, as well as walked down a dusty road and picked weeds in them. I did want to get out of them and into my afternoon dress.
That was not the only reason I wanted to go upstairs, however. I wanted to see what, if anything, Constable Collins might have discovered since the last time I had seen him, but more than that, I wanted a chance to listen in on the conversation Aunt Roz might be having with Lady Violet and the Honorable Olivia.
And since I did, and didn’t see the sense in giving anyone advanced notice that I was coming, I stopped at the foot of the stairs and kicked my shoes off. With them in my hand, I proceeded up the stairs silently, in my stocking feet.
The upstairs hallway looked the same as it had the last time I’d been here. I peered into the alcove on my way past, and saw that the peacock feathers were gone from the plinth. The door to Dom Rivers’s room was closed, and that was fine by me. The gentlemen from the mortuary hadn’t arrived yet to pick up the body, and I assumed Collins was trying to keep it from being gawked at by anyone else until then.
There were faint noises from within the room, the sounds of Collins investigating, I assumed. I didn’t think any of the reinforcements from the village had arrived yet, either, so it was still only him working the case here at Marsden Manor. Perhaps he had thought it possible to get fingerprints off the peacock feathers, and he had taken them in there with him. It wasn’t an outrageous idea: whoever had picked up the vase must have lifted the feathers out first, and laid them on the plinth, although if he—or she—had been wearing gloves, there’d be no fingerprints on any of it.
I didn’t knock on the door. Instead, I edged down the other side of the hallway towards the rooms on the opposite side.
Cecily’s room was the one in the middle. The door was still standing open. First on my right was Snowdrop, which I thought was Olivia’s room. I sidled up to the door, crossing my fingers that the floor wouldn’t creak, and held my breath.
There were no sounds from within. I could hear the rustling from across the hall, as well as the faint murmur of voices, but from further down.
