I suppose he must have assumed that Uncle Harold wouldn’t give him up even if he did happen to notice that the spots on the blotter matched the verbiage of the anonymous note, and he had been right, hadn’t he?Uncle Harold hadn’t said a word to anyone, as far as I knew.
Before I could take that thought any further, I heard the sound of a throat clearing behind me, and I swung on my heel, heart knocking against my ribs.
“Oh.”The relief was palpable.“Good morning, Tidwell.”
“Miss Darling.”Tidwell ran a practiced eye over the room.“You shouldn’t be here.”
No, I shouldn’t.I should leave immediately, before anyone other than Tidwell caught me.
I picked up the blotting paper before I walked away from the desk.Tidwell looked as if he’d like to protest, but only until I handed it to him on my way past.“Hold onto this for me, Tidwell.”
Tidwell gave both me and the paper a look, but all he said was, “Very well, Miss Darling.”
I brushed past him into the hallway, and watched as he shut the door to the study behind us with a pointedsnick.“The family is gathered in the breakfast room, Miss Darling,” he informed me as he turned.
“All of them?”
“His Grace is still in his chambers,” Tidwell said, “and Master Crispin has gone?—”
Gone?“Gone where?”
“To the constabulary,” Tidwell said, and my jaw dropped.Tidwell clarified, “He said he would be back shortly.”
Yes, of course he would say that.Telling the butler, “I’m going to give myself up for murder,” was surely out of the question.If the village was even where he had gone.He might have made a break for it, and only told Tidwell that he was going to the constabulary to gain a head start.
“Did you see him before he left?Did he seem all right?”
“His lordship seemed perturbed,” Tidwell intoned.
Yes, I could well believe it.“Christopher’s in the breakfast room, did you say?I must go there.”
Tidwell made no move to stop me, so I indicated the blotting paper.“Put that somewhere safe, if you would, Tidwell.The police will want to examine it, I expect.”
“Yes, Miss Darling,” Tidwell said, with a glance at the paper in his hand.Anything else he may have asked faded into nothingness behind me as I took off down the hallway as quickly as I could without flat out running.
The breakfast roomwas indeed full of people when I reached it.Aunt Roz and Uncle Herbert were gone, of course, and had not mysteriously materialized again overnight, but the Marsdens were gathered around one table, snacking on tea and eggs and sauteed mushrooms, while Christopher, Francis, and Constance were sitting at a second table, drinking coffee and picking at bacon and buttered toast.All three of them brightened when they saw me, and Christopher beckoned.
“There you are.I was beginning to worry.”
His eyes landed on my arm, which was better this morning than last night, but which I still favored and tended to keep close to my body.
“Rough night,” I told him as I angled out the empty chair between him and Francis and made my way onto it.“I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to visit the carriage house, and someone attacked me.”
They all turned silent.So did the Marsdens, although they appeared to try to be more circumspect about it.
“Who?”Christopher demanded.
I shrugged, and winced when it jolted my arm.“I have no idea.We didn’t precisely have a conversation.I opened the door and turned on my torch, and whoever it was threw a bicycle pump and a blanket at me, and got away.”
There was a quickly suppressed snigger from the other table.Laetitia, surely, although Geoffrey has been known to have an inane sense of humor as well, although perhaps not this particular week.Francis’s lips twitched.“A bicycle pump and a blanket, you say?”
“The bicycle pump first, to make me drop the torch.Whoever he was, he had good aim.The blanket came a few seconds later, when he knocked me over and ran past me and out the door.”
“What’s wrong with the arm?”Constance inquired, and I turned to her.
“Thank you for asking, Constance.”Unlike some people, who merely seemed to enjoy my suffering.“I don’t think it’s broken.Just bruised and sore, I think.It’s purple and yellow.”
Constance winced, and so did Christopher.Not Francis, of course.He’s seen much worse.
