It was all just too much.My mouth puckered, and I dropped the bundle back into the drawer and shoved it shut before rubbing my hands against my skirt.My palms itched, as if I had touched something sticky.Something saccharine and sweet, that threatened to turn my stomach.
But that was all by the by, I told myself.I hadn’t wanted to know how explicit Laetitia’s love notes to Crispin were.I had wanted a gander at her handwriting, to see whether it matched, in any respect, that of the anonymous letter writer.
And the answer was that I couldn’t tell.They had nothing in common, certainly.Laetitia’s hand was feminine and elegant, while the anonymous note had been spiky and accusatory.But had Laetitia taken the pen in her left hand and scrawled the few words I had seen… well, who knew whether she might not have approximated the same effect as the note?
This had been a waste of time and effort.I left Crispin’s bedroom as I found it, and made my way across the floor to the door to the hallway.
I was approximately six feet away from safety when it happened.I had looked right and left before stepping through the door into the hallway.(The last thing I wanted was to be spotted sneaking out of Crispin’s chambers.) The fact that the east wing had been empty was what had given me the impetus to leave the suite.I crossed the threshold and pulled the door shut behind me.I turned towards the servants’ staircase and was just about to make my way in that direction when a scream at the other end of the hall pierced my eardrums.
I winced and turned, in time to see Laetitia come down the hall towards me like a fury, skirts flapping around her calves and bob bouncing, face twisted in anger.Behind her, her mother smirked.
“You!”Laetitia shrieked, the pitch of her voice close to that range where only bats would be able to hear it, and getting louder as she approached.“What are you doing in my fiancé’s room?”
I thought about taking the cowardly way out, by throwing myself through the door into the servants’ staircase and escaping that way.I had enough time to do it, or would have done, had I moved immediately.I didn’t, because when it comes right down to it, I don’t avoid confrontation, even when someone comes at me with claws extended and murder in her eyes.
I would honestly not have been surprised had she wrapped both hands around my throat and squeezed.I wouldn’t have been surprised had she attacked me in other ways, either, perhaps by backing me into the wall and knocking my head against it a few times.It looked very much as if something like that was coming.But some semblance of sanity must have reared its head before she reached me, or perhaps it was the fact that I stood my ground and that the sneer on my face was worthy of Crispin at his most abhorrent.
“What do you think I’m doing in your fiancé’s room?”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed her face, and I added, “I was looking for a sample of his handwriting to see whether he was the one who shopped me to the constabulary, of course.”
Laetitia blinked.
“Someone told the local constabulary that I killed Doctor Meadows,” I reminded her.“I thought it might have been Crispin.”
She recovered.“He would never!”
I snorted.“Of course he would have done.He despises me.”
Or so I would have believed, a few months ago.Now, of course, I knew better.But Laetitia didn’t know that Christopher had come clean about Crispin’s feelings for me, to me, and what Laetitia didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
“The note doesn’t match his handwriting in any case,” I told her.“Nor does it match yours, in case you wondered.”
There was a beat of silence.“Mine?”
“I happened to find your stack of love letters in the bedside table.”I smirked.“I hope you don’t mind that I took a look.It was just to make sure that you hadn’t tried to frame me for murder.Honestly.”
I had no idea whether she believed me or not.Probably not, as I made no effort to sound sincere about it.
But my statement seemed to have rendered her speechless, at any rate.She stared at me, goldfish-like, with her mouth open and her cheeks flushed.It’s difficult to make a woman as lovely as Laetitia Marsden appear anything but beautiful, but in this case she did look rather simple.
I gave her a patronizing little nod.“If you’ll excuse me.”
She didn’t say anything, or lift a hand to stop me, so I took the couple of steps towards the servants’ staircase and pulled the door open.“I shall see you both downstairs,” I told them, before I ducked inside and headed down.
Tom madeit to Little Sutherland in time for tea.We were just gathering in the sitting room for the genial beverage when there was the sound of a motorcar on the gravel in the courtyard, and I twitched on my chair like the proverbial scalded cat.I’ll readily admit that by that point I was jumpy, as well as moderately concerned for my future wellbeing.I thought I had made it clear to Constable Daniels that I had had nothing to do with the murder, but who was to say that some sort of new evidence hadn’t come up, something that implicated me more definitively than a hastily scrawled anonymous note?Anyone who wanted to frame me, and who had access to Sutherland Hall and my bedchamber, might have taken the opportunity to procure some item of mine with which to salt the crime scene.
Thus, when I heard the sound of a motor arriving outside, my first thought was that the local authorities were back, this time to drag me off to a jail cell in Little Sutherland.
And it must have shown, because Christopher’s eyes flew to mine across the table.“All right, Pippa?”
I nodded vacantly while I peeled my ears for further sounds from the front of the house.After a moment, I heard Tidwell’s measured footsteps cross the marble of the foyer, and then the sound of the front door opening.A slight pause followed, and then?—
“Good afternoon, Detective Sergeant,” Tidwell said politely.
I whimpered.Not even a constable, it seemed, but a detective sergeant.They were coming to arrest me for certain.
“Shhh!”Christopher hissed.His ears were pricked.Wave the title Detective Sergeant in front of him, and only one thing—or one person—comes to mind.
