I made a face, since I knew exactly what he was talking about. Dominic Rivers had told me about it earlier, before he headed up the stairs to the second floor and his doom.
Tom stood. “As nice as it was to see you both—” His eyes lingered on Christopher for a long second, before his attention flicked over to Wolfgang and he changed it to, “—all three of you, I ought to make myself useful. Collins is upstairs, you said?”
“On the second floor last I saw him,” I said. “That’s where most of us were sleeping. Christopher was on the first floor with the family—Constance and Francis, too; cousins to the bride and groom respectively, you know—but the rest of us plebeians were on the top floor.”
“Miss Fletcher? Rivers?”
I nodded. “Both of them, along with Violet and Olivia, Wolfgang and I, and the Honorable Reginald Fish, who shared with Rivers. He’s the chap sitting with Geoffrey Marsden and the two girls.”
Tom eyed the Honorable Reggie for a moment before he asked, “Is that Bilge Fortescue over there?”
“Oh.” I had forgotten about the Fortescues again. “Yes. They’re on the first floor, for some reason. I don’t think either of them is related to either Laetitia or Crispin, but the bigger rooms are there, and I suppose they rated one. We’re all stuffed into the smaller rooms up above.”
“I remember Bilge,” Tom said, and of course he did. He had been at Eton two years behind Francis and three above Christopher and Crispin. He would have dealt with William Fortescue for at least a couple of those years.
“I haven’t gotten to know him,” I answered, “although his wife used her wiles on Christopher earlier.”
Tom arched his brows. “Is that so?”
He glanced at Christopher, who shook his head. “Don’t be silly, Pippa. She wanted an arm to cling to on her way down the stairs, that’s all.”
“And to ask you questions about what was going on upstairs,” I answered.
Christopher nodded. “That as well, I suppose.”
He didn’t look at me. He and Tom were sharing some form of silent communication that made Christopher’s cheeks turn pink and Tom’s lips twitch. When they noticed me notice, they stopped, and Tom cleared his throat. “I’ll just be going, then.”
“Take care, Tom,” Christopher said, and I added, “Let us know if you discover anything exciting, would you? It’s boring, sitting here waiting for something to happen.”
Tom hid another smile—this one at my expense, I assumed—and a flicker of a look at Wolfgang. I grimaced. I hadn’tintended to make it sound like he was boring, but the truth was, I would much rather be upstairs trying to figure out who had killed Cecily Fletcher and Dominic Rivers, than be sitting here at the tea table, behaving like a perfect lady while entertaining a potential suitor.
Tom made his way towards the door, and I turned to Wolfgang, determined to make up for myfaux pas. “You must think we’re all ghouls, with our interest in dead bodies.”
“Last month was exciting,” Wolfgang said blandly. “I’m happy the perpetrators are behind bars, however. I would hate for anything bad to happen.”
Yes, so would I. “I’m mostly worried about Myrtle,” I confessed. “Sid isn’t a bad bloke, just weak, and I think the same is true for Ruth. She just fell in with the wrong crowd, or more accurately, with Myrtle.”
After a second, I added, “Not that they don’t deserve to rot in prison for a long time for what they did, of course. But it was Myrtle who came up with the plan and talked Ruth into executing it with her. And she’d execute me too, if she could. Although I don’t imagine that she’ll get the chance, do you?”
I had been chatting with Wolfgang, but it was Christopher who shook his head. “Not likely, Pippa. There’s too much evidence and far too much cold-bloodedness there to let her off. And after she has served her term at Holloway, she’ll be deported back to America, I’d think. They deported Billy Chang after he had served his sentence.”
I nodded. “That’s what I think, too, but I’m happy to have it confirmed. Having her escorted to the docks and put on a boat instead of being set free to roam after her sentence would be a load off my mind.”
“Who is this Chang?” Wolfgang wanted to know, and I turned back to him.
“I suppose you haven’t been in England long enough to hear about him, have you? Billy Chang was a dope dealer in Limehouse in the early 1920s. They arrested him in 1924, and kept him in prison until 1925, and then he was deported. Back to China, supposedly, but?—”
“—rumor has it that he’s running a nightclub on the French Riviera now,” Christopher said gleefully. And added, “That’s from the American gutter press, however, so I don’t know how reliable it is.”
Not very, I imagined. “He’s not in England anymore, at any rate. Let’s hope that the same thing happens to Myrtle Cavanaugh.”
“Hear, hear.” Christopher raised his teacup. I clinked mine against it. A little belatedly, Wolfgang lifted his cup, too, and I gave that the same treatment. We all took a sip. The tea was getting cold, and I put it down with a grimace. Across the room, Crispin was scowling our way, and I scowled back, until Christopher nudged me. “Keep your attention over here, Pippa. Laetitia doesn’t like you any better than Myrtle does, and you don’t want to give her any excuse to take a potshot at you.”
“Like someone did this morning, do you mean?” I eyed him. “You don’t think it was Laetitia, do you?”
“She was out there in the woods,” Christopher said, “with a gun, and she would dearly love to get rid of you. But I imagine that Crispin was attached to her side, and he wouldn’t have put up with that, so chances are he would have said something to you had that been the case.”
“Unless she threatened him into silence,” I said.
