I waved in their direction, but elected not to add myself to the group. Aunt Roz could tell them what we had talked about, and Wolfgang had been joined by Christopher, who must have taken pity on our beleaguered German friend. I headed that way instead, and took a seat on the opposite side of the small table. “Good afternoon.”
Wolfgang ran an experienced eye over me. His mouth curved up, so I assumed he approved of my new outfit. Christopher, on the other hand?—
“You horrible chit. How dare you go upstairs and change while I’ve had to spend all day in these clothes?”
“You were outside with Francis and your father,” I said. “You could have chosen to go upstairs instead, to change.”
“How would that have looked, if I prioritized my own comfort over my brother’s mental stability?” He didn’t wait for me to answer, just added, “Tea?”
“If you don’t mind.”
We don’t stand on ceremony in our household: Christopher pours as often as I do. “What’s wrong?” he added, as he handed me the cup. “You look perturbed.”
“Thank you.” I set it down on the table. “I’m not perturbed. Or rather, of course I am. Two people are dead. Three if you count Cecily’s baby, although I suppose it might have been a bit early to do so.”
Christopher made a face, and I added, “But in case you were worried, no. Nothing else has happened, other than that Constable Collins gave me a rather ominous goodbye upstairs earlier.”
“What did he say?”
I told him what Collins had said, and watched the curve of his mouth relax. “I’m sure he meant nothing by it. You’re not a suspect.”
“I might be a suspect. I was the last one to see her alive, and?—”
“We were all there when she died,” Christopher interrupted.
“Yes, of course. But I meant last night. I was the last one to see her last night. To someone who doesn’t know me and love me, I might have been the one to give her whatever killed her. And I was also the last one to speak to Dominic Rivers this afternoon.”
“I would think that that makes you a likely victim rather than a murderess,” Christopher said, and then seemed to realize what he was saying, because he added, “No, of course not. There’s no reason for anyone to murder you.”
“Someone shot at me earlier,” I pointed out.
“Coincidence,” Christopher said airily.
I shrugged. “I had no reason to want Cecily dead. It wasn’t your baby. Crispin says it wasn’t his. I know it wasn’t Francis’s. I don’t care about anyone else.”
Christopher cleared his throat delicately, and I added, with a bright smile, “Of course that doesn’t include you, Wolfgang. But you’d never even met Cecily Fletcher, had you? So there’s no reason to think you were involved.”
“I didn’t know the girl,” Wolfgang agreed. “Although it was very sad, what happened to her.”
Yes, it had been. And nothing much either Christopher or I could say in response to a statement like that.
“What did Uncle Herbert have to say for himself?” I asked Christopher instead.
He shook his head. “Nothing to the point. What about Aunt Roz?”
“Nothing to the point, either. She had a talk with Lady Violet and Olivia upstairs. I listened outside the door.”
Christopher’s lips twitched and I remembered, yet again, that Wolfgang was sitting next to me. I probably wasn’t making a very good impression on him at this point.
“They don’t know what happened,” I added, ignoring it. “They didn’t know who Cecily had been sharing her bed with, but Olivia said it was someone Cecily had claimed that she couldn’t marry. I don’t know whether that was because he was married, engaged, or simply a cad.”
“Could be any of the above,” Christopher agreed. “I wouldn’t want to marry most of the people here.”
I wouldn’t, either. Whether that was actually a possibility or not. In Christopher’s, it mostly wasn’t.
“Your mother thinks that Olivia is sweet on the Hon Reggie,” I said. “I had suspected that anyway, from watching them yesterday. But the way she talked about him seemed to confirm it.”
Christopher nodded. “He seems like a decent enough chap. Not as handsy as Geoffrey, nor as belligerent as Bilge, nor as immoral as Rivers.”
