“One of those,” Crispin said, with a hint of a flush in his cheeks, “yes.”
I sniggered. “My lord? Really? I’m sure you enjoyed that, St George—”
“Moderately,” Crispin said.
“—but that’s simply vile. Out of curiosity, did you return the favor?”
His brow curved up. “Of course not. I called her Miss de Vos. As was proper.”
Of course. “It leaves the field a bit more open, though, doesn’t it?Dear Crispinis one thing. OrDear St George. Just plainCis another. There’s Christopher and Constance, just to name two other options.”
“She’d hardly arrange an illicit assignation with me,” Christopher said.
“But she might have with Constance. Not an illicit assignation, of course, but if she was devastated enough by being rejected by St George, she might have wanted another woman to talk to. Lady Peckham was gone, and Lady Laetitia was out of the question, of course, and I’m sure she had figured out that I wasn’t likely to be a sympathetic ear…”
Christopher and Crispin both snorted.
“—but she and Constance had lived in the same household for years. She might have been self-centered enough to think she could cry on Constance’s shoulder.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“The initial was curly enough to have been a G, as well,” I added. “That means Gilbert and Geoffrey are in the running. They both wear cufflinks. If the onyx pair isn’t yours, St George, they had to have come from somewhere.”
“But the cufflink rather takes Laetitia out,” Crispin said, “doesn’t it? Isn’t she your favored suspect, Darling?”
“You don’t think she knows where her brother keeps his cufflinks?” I arched a brow at him. “If the cufflink was planted, it doesn’t follow that whoever planted it is someone who wears cufflinks, you know. I can guarantee you that she’s familiar with her brother’s cufflinks, and I’m sure she knows yours—you might even have worn the onyx back in January when you took her to bed, mightn’t you?—and who had a better reason for wanting to punish both of you? Johanna for taking you away from her, and you for letting her do it.”
He had no answer to that, so I turned back to Christopher, who asked, “Do you think Johanna wrote the note to someone else, then, Pippa? Maybe even at a different time? And someone decided to make use of it?”
“It’s possible,” I said. “It wasn’t dated. Maybe Constance found it slipped under our door this morning—I might have missed it in the dark; I was up early—and she decided to use it to incriminate St George.”
“Why would Constance Peckham want to incriminate me?” Crispin sounded sincerely baffled.
“If she killed Johanna?” I said. “She’d want to incriminate anyone she thought she could make look guilty, I imagine. And there was certainly no love lost between them. If Lady Peckham’s death was a murder, Constance had motive to want to get rid of them both.”
“You think that mousey little thing could commit two murders?”
“It’s often the quiet ones,” I said, although my only real evidence for that was from murder mystery novels. And from Her Grace, Duchess Charlotte of Sutherland, I suppose, but it didn’t seem polite to bring that up. “If they were both murdered, someone had reason to want them both dead. If we can think of someone like that—and I can think of Constance—it behooves us to consider them, no matter how mousey they are.”
“I thought I heard you tell Pendennis that Constance couldn’t have done it because you shared a room and she didn’t leave last night.”
“I don’t think she left,” I said. “But I couldn’t swear to it. It’s possible I might have slept through it, if she did. I don’t think I would have—I woke up several times—but I couldn’t swear. I don’t want her to be guilty, but between the three of us, she had motive, and I can’t say with a hundred percent certainty that she didn’t have opportunity.”
Crispin shrugged. “So now what?”
“I suppose I should go have a conversation with Constance,” I said. “See what, if anything, she has to say about any of this. Christopher, perhaps you can go find Tom. See if he’ll spare you a few moments. Make it seem as if you’re worried about your cousin…”
“Iamworried about my cousin,” Christopher said.
“—and maybe he’ll feel compelled to tell you something comforting that’ll move us forward.”
Christopher nodded.
“St George…” I eyed him. “How do you feel about Lady Laetitia?”
“Why, Darling—”
“No,” I said. It had been a rhetorical question, nothing more. I didn’t actually want to know. “She seems to want you, at least as long as someone else does. Spend time with her. If nothing else, she won’t try to frame you anymore, if you pay her enough attention.”
