Christopher smiled indulgently. “I’m certain he will do, Pippa. He’ll talk to all of the servants about it, I’m sure. He’s actually quite good at his job, you know.”
“Of course he is, Christopher.” I patted his hand. After a second, I added, “At least she isn’t in here to hear me make a case against the lady of the manor.”
Uncle Herbert looked intrigued. “The Countess Marsden, do you mean? You have a case against her, too? Or do you mean her daughter?”
“I can make a case against either,” I said expansively. “Of course, it’s mostly the same case. The same motive and means. They may even be in on it together.”
Uncle Harold looked deeply offended by the idea, but when Uncle Herbert said, “Let’s hear it,” and his brother gave him a judgmental look, probably for encouraging me to disparage my betters further, Uncle Herbert merely added, “Don’t be a stick in the mud, Harold. We’ve got to do something while we’re sitting here, and I’m entertained by the outlandishness of the theories.”
“Well, this one isn’t really very outlandish,” I said, while I assiduously avoided looking at the grumbling Duke of Sutherland, because he wasn’t going to like any of this. “Nor is it complicated at all. In this scenario, Crispin is the father of the baby.”
Uncle Harold opened his mouth, outraged, and I added, “Or Laetitia and her mother think he is, at any rate. I know he isn’t. He assured me of it. Repeatedly.”
That, for some reason, did not make Uncle Harold any happier. I ignored him and his scowling, and carried on. “Laetitia and Lady Euphemia don’t want to give up the Sutherland title and money to Cecily—or to give Laetitia herdue, perhaps she simply doesn’t want to give up St George—so separately, they decide to take matters into their own hands. Laetitia invites Dominic Rivers to her engagement party, and pays him to bring a quantity of pennyroyal, enough to induce a miscarriage in Cecily. Lady Euphemia, meanwhile, wanders down the road and picks enough pennyroyal to accomplish the same thing. Neither of them knows what the other is doing.”
“I like it so far,” Christopher said.
I did, too, as a matter of fact. “It explains what Rivers was doing here. Crispin wouldn’t have invited him, and it would be very rude of anyone else to do so. Anyone who wasn’t a member of the household, I mean.”
“So they each dose the young lady,” Uncle Herbert said, “but independently of one another.”
I nodded. “One dose in one of her drinks after dinner last night, and one in the cup of tea she had in her room later, supposedly to settle her stomach from the first dose. It would have been easy for either of them to bring her a cup of tea to make her feel better, or to ask one of the maids to do it.”
“Then she dies,” Christopher said, “and Laetitia kills Rivers to keep it quiet about her share of the pennyroyal?—”
Uncle Harold winced, but he didn’t complain. I nodded. “And in this scenario, I suppose she then goes on to kill Violet, as well.”
“Why would she do that?” Uncle Herbert wanted to know. Unlike his brother, he didn’t seem bothered by the conjecture, merely interested in where the story might go.
I exchanged a glance with Christopher. “I suppose because Violet, too, at one time dallied with St George. If she’s willing to do away with one rival, she might as well get rid of the other.”
“Or a third,” Christopher said. When I turned to him—which third?—he added, “this would explain what happened on the lawn, you realize? Laetitia was out in the woods with the huntingparty. There was nothing to keep her from taking a shot at you when she saw you standing there.”
“Why would she—? Oh.” I flushed. “I assure you, Christopher, I’m no impediment to her happiness with St George. We’ve talked about this before. I wouldn’t have him giftwrapped with a bow around his neck, and the feeling is mutual.”
Uncle Herbert muttered something. Uncle Harold merely looked stony. He didn’t like me, I knew that for a fact, but perhaps my cavalier dismissal of his son and heir rankled, even so.
“The same scenario would go for Bilge and Serena,” I added. “If the baby was Bilge’s, he and his wife could have done away with Cecily in the same way. Violet might have lied about not knowing who the baby’s father was, so they killed her, too.”
“Or Reggie Fish,” Christopher nodded. “He actually brought Rivers here. Physically brought him, I mean. And you said Olivia Barnsley is sweet on him, didn’t you?”
I nodded. “In that scenario, I suppose she was the one who walked down the road and picked the second dose of pennyroyal? Much harder for her or Serena to get that steeped into tea and into Cecily’s hands, I’d say, than for Laetitia or Lady Marsden. They couldn’t exactly walk into the kitchen and do it themselves.”
Although anyone could take the pennyroyal leaves to the kitchen and ask for them to be steeped, I imagined, and then brought up to them, and from there, it would be a fairly easy task to pass the cup on to Cecily with caring concern. Any of her girlfriends could have done that without raising her suspicions.
Christopher groaned. “My head is spinning. I cannot wait until Tom is done in the study and we get to leave this room.”
I nodded. I felt the same way. We had spent entirely too much time here. “Hopefully it won’t be long now. It’s just thefour of us left, and I can’t imagine either of the uncles know anything about this mess.”
“Not aside from what you’ve just told us,” Uncle Herbert said cheerfully. “We arrived much too late to have anything to do with what happened last night or this morning, so I imagine we’re off the hook for this one.”
“Must be nice,” Christopher said.
I chuckled, but before I could say anything, Uncle Herbert told him, “I imagine you’re off the hook too, Kit. I doubt Tom is likely to think you—either of you…” he glanced at me, “guilty of this.”
“He’s not stupid,” I agreed, “so I don’t imagine he does. If anything, I assume he’s keeping us for last so he can check everything everyone else has told him against what we know. We have no reason to lie.”
“Give the lady a prize,” Tom’s voice said from behind me, and I looked over my shoulder in time to see him close the hallway door behind him. “Got it in one, Pippa; well done.”
